


The Arrangement

by FinnreyTropes



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, From Sex to Love, Implied/Referenced Sexual Harassment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-07
Updated: 2018-11-18
Packaged: 2019-07-27 17:56:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 45,779
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16224320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FinnreyTropes/pseuds/FinnreyTropes
Summary: Rey Walker and Finn Leonis have a good thing going. Great sex with no strings, and they actually enjoy each others' company. No commitments, no attachments, no problems — except a big one in the form of her boss, and a white lie that takes on a life of its own.





	1. Girlfriend

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is JS with my first story (please see our profile page for bios of the three writers who share this account). This story is COMPLETE. I will update each Sunday. I welcome any and all feedback.

Rey Walker decided that the conversation could not be had naked.

Wriggling her way out of the warm circle of arms in which she’d been relaxing a few moments before, she groped the floor until she found her panties, hurriedly stepping into them while keeping her back to the supine form in the bed behind her.

She heard a soft chuckle, and her face reddened.

 _Asshole_. _I’m having an existential crisis and he’s enjoying the show._

Now somewhat-attired, she turned around, arms crossed over her breasts. Interestingly, she did not feel any less naked than before. That could have been because of the look in her partner’s eyes as he levered himself on one arm, as if wanting to see her properly.

Finn Leonis had beautiful eyes. And they seemed even more luminescent in the dim light of the bedroom.

_He should put something on, too! He’s distracting me on purpose._

But she didn’t suggest it, because deep down, she really didn’t want him to get dressed.

Rey glared down at him as Finn stared up at her. His body was lightly sheened with sweat and loose with pleasure, as hers had been before they’d started their … pillow talk.

“Rey, it was just a question. A ‘no’ would have been fine.”

“Would it? Thank you _so_ much for letting me know.”

Her tone was more defensive than she’d hoped it would be. The panties weren’t working.

“I shouldn’t have mentioned it at all.”

“No, that wouldn't have worked because, it’s something that’s bothering you," said Finn. "I could tell  something was up. You didn’t really seem, dunno, like yourself tonight —”

“Oh my god, Finn. Is this because I didn’t want to sit on your face? I told you, my hips are a little sore from last week. I _knew_ I shouldn’t have tried that split —”

“— It’s not about that, and you know it.”

His voice had changed timber. Rey wondered if it was the same sort of tone he used in the courtroom when he was about to go in for the kill. She shivered, half from dread and half from excitement. An idle thought crossed her mind about Finn’s voice being one of the most arousing things about him.

He slid out of bed suddenly and stood before her. Before Rey could stop herself, her eyes traveled the length of his body, taking the scenic route.

Yes, his voice was _one_ of the most arousing things about him, all right.

“Then tell me what’s it _all about_ , Counselor?”

She knew that nickname irked him, but she wanted to gain back some of her equilibrium. Seeing him in all his naked glory made her realize that the night was still young and that her mouth wasn’t the only thing that was watering.

Finn sighed and then found his boxers, pulling them on in a fluid motion. Rey tried hard to not let her disappointment show. She was very glad the room was still dark.

“I don’t get the attitude,” he said, taking a seat on the edge of the bed. “Some douche at your job is bothering you, I suggest that maybe me and dude should have a talk, and you sprint out of bed and start yelling at me!”

“It’s not an _attitude._ And I wasn’t yelling. I make a comment about an asshole at work who has nothing better to do than say stupid things he thinks will impress me, and you go all pistols-at-dawn on me.”

“Nah. My sharpshooting days are over.” His voice was laconic. “And anyway, it would _just_ be a … talk.”

“ _No._ ” Rey grabbed her bralette and slipped it on. “We’re _friends_. Friends who happen to have amazing sex together — which is great. But I’m _not_ your girlfriend. You’re _not_ my boyfriend. We agreed to that at the start of this … _arrangement_. No demands. No jealousy. No expectations. Nothing deep. We have a good thing going, Finn. I don’t want to ruin it.”

“I get all that. But I don’t understand why I can’t … as a _friend_ … tell a dickhead that is bothering my _friend_ to cut it the fuck out.”

Rey sighed, shaking her head. “Because I can do that myself. I _have_ done it myself. I don’t need or want someone speaking for me as if they have some … claim on me.”

“I _don’t_ think I have a _claim_ on you, Rey. Jesus.” Finn ran a hand over his hair. “A shitheel is bothering you. You’re not happy about it. I suggested I do something to make it stop. That’s _all._ There isn’t any ulterior motive here. I _know_ I’m not your boyfriend. _I get it_. It’s not about that. It’s about wanting shitty behavior toward someone I really like _as a person_ to stop happening.”

Rey began to speak, but stopped. After a moment of indecision, she sat next to him on the bed, enjoying the warmth of skin on skin as their thighs touched.

“It’s not that I don’t appreciate the sentiment, Finn. I do.” Her voice was soft. “But I can take care of myself, okay? I’ve dealt with a lot worse in my life than an idiot who looks at my tits and asks if I need Facilities to turn up the heat because I must be cold.”

“Rey —”

“I’m not saying it doesn’t suck. I’m saying that the shit he’s trying to pull is more of an annoyance than anything. He knows just how far to take it that he can say he’s just being ‘friendly’ or ‘helpful’ or whatever. You ‘talking’ to him or punching him in the teeth isn’t going to do me much good.”

She fell silent for a moment. “I need this job. I’m looking every day for something else. But until then …”

Rey trailed off, not sure what else to say. They sat in silence for a few minutes. Rey got up after a while and began to get fully dressed. Shortly after, Finn followed suit. They said nothing as they did so, and Rey voiced a soft “no” when Finn broke the silence by asking if she wanted to grab something to eat before she drove home.

“Have you talked to HR about this? If he’s harassing you, they need to do something about it.”

“That’s just it. He isn’t … _harassing_ me, exactly.” Rey swallowed. “I mean, he _is_ , but like I’ve said, he’s careful. No dick pics, no groping, nothing concrete. Snoke Inc.’s position on sexual harassment is basically, ‘If your boss pulls his cock out in front of you and you’re not into it, then there might be a problem. Otherwise, shut up, smile, do your work and stop being so sensitive.’”

There was a long exhale. “Rey, you —”

“I _know_ , Finn.” Her voice was harsh. “But jobs don’t grow on trees. I’m not you. I don’t have a law degree and a bunch of Latin honors from a top school. I don’t even have a college degree. I _know_ I’ve gotta get the fuck out of there, and I’m trying, but meanwhile, I have to eat and have a roof over my head, and it’s a job that pays more than minimum wage, so I make a halfway decent salary that I couldn’t expect to find with my lack of experience. They _know_ that, so they don’t have to do shit unless someone really steps out of line!”

Rey was aware that the atmosphere in the room had become stifling and heavy and awkward. She hated it, but she felt the conversation was necessary. Hopefully Finn would understand, but she wasn’t sure. Aside from being an officer of the court, Finn worked for a wonderful company that valued things such as not being creepy fuckbags to your subordinates. Snoke Incorporated was all about the work — the _workers_ were barely a secondary consideration.

“What made you think of him?”

The question was not accusatory, but it was so unexpected, flung out as it was in near-darkness after near-silence, that Rey nearly gasped in shock.

“W-what?”

“You’ve never said a word to me about this dude or this situation before tonight. I thought you were saying something now because you wanted me to do something about him bothering you.” Finn paused in buttoning his shirt. “That obviously wasn’t it, so I’m wondering what suddenly brought him to your mind.”

The unspoken … _after we’d just finished fucking_ … hung in the air like a slowly deflating balloon. Rey’s cheeks pinkened again. She’d been in Finn’s arms, catching her breath after an orgasm that had robbed her of the ability to speak for several minutes … they’d started chatting and …

No.

Oh _no_.

Surely Finn _couldn’t_ think that –

“Your refrigerator,” she blurted, her face going fully crimson. “You said something about needing to get it replaced, and he just … popped into my head.”

Finn stared. “I mentioned a refrigerator and you thought of _this_ guy?”

“You’d have to see him in person to understand. It’s about the way he’s … built.”

“What? Did he play football in school or something?”

“Umm … I doubt it.”

Rey wanted to get off the subject of Ben Solo as soon as possible. Finn’s pointing out that she’d mentioned him while in bed with him made her feel guilty, though she couldn’t say why. She certainly did _not_ want to fuck the man. She hadn’t been thinking. She’d felt calm and safe in Finn’s arms, and …

Rey shook her head almost violently. No. No use letting her thoughts lead her _there._

“So,” she said as she stepped into her heels, “same time next week? My place?”

“Next week? No. I’m going out of town. Canto Bight. You forgot?”

Rey winced. She had. But it was all coming back to her. Finn had some lawyerly _thing_ at the ass-end of the country, and he’d be gone much of the following week. He’d asked her to housesit, which she was not looking forward to as much as she might have otherwise. Finn’s beautiful townhome had her poky little studio beat to hell, but it would be very strange to be in Finn’s space _without_ Finn.

“No, of course not. I was just joking.” She forced a laugh and ignored his _yeah right_ eyebrow waggle.

“Are you excited? I hear Canto Bight is something else.”

“Eh, not really. These conferences are all the same no matter where they’re held.” He shrugged. “A lot of gladhanding, a bunch of associates trying to guess who’ll make partner next year, a bunch of partners wondering if their associates are stealing from their book of business, overpriced food, a lot of seminars on teamwork, and I just know I’m gonna get pulled out at the airport by TSA for ‘enhanced’ searching.”

Rey bit her lip. Well, when he put it _that_ way …

“But it’s Canto Bight,” she persisted. “It’s supposed to be beautiful and glamourous with all the resorts and spas and gaming houses. You’ll have some free time to at least catch a show or go to the casinos, right?”

“Maybe.” Finn shrugged. “One of the LAAs is from near there, and what she told me kinda put me off, to be honest.”

“LAA? What does that mean?”

“Legal Administrative Assistant. They stopped calling them ‘legal secretaries’ in the 90s. It was sexist.” Finn adjusted his belt. “Anyway, she’s from one of the towns on the Cantonica Peninsula that’s, like, a few miles from the resort we’ll be in. She said the local government looks the other way and lets the rest of the area go to shit while all the natural resources are exploited for the resorts and the ‘regular’ people live practically on the streets. The glitz and glitter are a façade. You step outside your hotel and go two or three blocks into a type of poverty you couldn’t even imagine.”

Rey mulled that. She had grown up alone in the armpit of the world, Jakku Gulch. She knew from poverty. So did Finn, who had weathered a childhood in a military academy in the Arkanis Narrows that had been more like a prison. If whatever he’d been told about Greater Cantonica had been _so_ bad that he’d assert that neither of them could imagine how horrible it was, it had to be dire, indeed.

“How long will you be there again?”

“Four days, more or less. Leave on Monday, back on Thursday night. I’ll leave my spare set of keys with management on Sunday evening,” he said. “I’ve already told them that I have a _friend_ housesitting, and gave them your name, so you’ll just need some ID to pick up the keys. If you want to order anything, I have an account set up on Beluga. I’ll leave you my login info. You can just pick whatever, and order.”

Rey nodded. She’d already refused to take money for watching his place while he was gone, and she supposed this was Finn’s way of trying to give her some sort of tangible perks, particularly since she wasn’t much for cooking at the end of a long day of work.

Once they were both fully dressed — which always puzzled Rey, since she’d assumed Finn would just be going right back to bed and sleeping — they parted with their customary peck on the lips and murmured goodbyes.

As Rey made her way down to the car park, she reflected that Finn was extremely good to her. Probably _too_ good.

 

* * *

 

Rey was yawning at 11 the next morning. That was never a good sign. Fridays could be hit or miss at the office — either completely rammed or slow as hell. That day, it was tending toward the latter, which meant that the hours until 5 p.m. would drag on and on.

She stifled another yawn and glanced at her inbox, then at her to-do list. While it was very rarely completely dead at Snoke Incorporated, she was never a big fan of the quiet times. Internet activity was monitored, so surfing the web was out. A person had to clock in and out to use the toilet, and if the computer registered idleness for more than five minutes, an unseen alarm went off, prompting a visit from a supervisor to see what was going on.

Rey had no desire to see Ben Solo that day. She hadn’t seen him all that morning, even at the early briefing when initial assignments were handed out. It would be nice, she thought with a grimace, if she were able to avoid his wide-bodied ass the entire day.

Her thoughts drifted to Finn. He said that Fridays were hit or miss with him, too, at work. Sometimes he had to interview clients in preparation for trial, other times he had departmental meetings or trainings. She wondered what he was doing at that moment … if he’d woken up that morning, as she had, a bit disoriented, and pleasantly sore —

“Rey.”

Long practice of having to endure the attentions of despicable men in Jakku Gulch allowed Rey to not show any surprise or make any sudden moves when she was creeped on. Even still, she cursed herself for not considering that Solo might take the back stairs to the second floor, thus being able to catch her unawares.

She swiveled slowly around, giving herself time to arrange her face into a mask of pleasant disinterest.

“Hello, Mr. Solo.”

As Rey looked at Ben Solo, Rey reflected that there were quite a few people in the company who would have welcomed his attentions and actually found him a choice morsel.

She didn’t get it. Though he wasn’t, in her mind, _that_ bad-looking. He was very tall and pale with an angular face and dark hair in a longish cut that probably had gone out of style a decade earlier. Someone with his coloring, the affected hairstyle and the height might be expected to be fairly thin, but Ben Solo was unexpectedly very thickset, with a torso so wide that it made his other bodily proportions look extremely boxy and stolid.

She had to stifle a snicker at the memory of her refrigerator remark to Finn.

But for Rey, there was something unpleasant in his features — a sort of twist to his lips that made him look as if he were looking down at a person and possibly thinking dirty thoughts about them. His dark eyes, too, could be very cold and dismissive.

Rey had never been overly concerned about a man’s height or his body. Finn, for example, was only a couple of inches taller than she was, and that was fine by her. And by him — he never squawked when she wore heels, for example. And Finn’s body was … nice. _Extremely nice._ She never looked at him and thought of kitchen appliances.

Rey had so far ignored all Solo’s protestations to call him ‘Ben.’ She did not want to encourage any sort of familiarity. He was a supervisor, and she called all supervisors Mr. or Ms., as they preferred. Solo was no different, no matter how many chummy grins he aimed at her.

She took a breath and tried to infuse her voice with enthusiasm.

“Did you have something you needed me to take care of?”

“It’s a little early,” he said with an oily smirk. “But maybe later.”

“I’ll be very busy later.” Rey’s voice was professional and slightly clipped as she brushed off the obvious hidden meaning in his words. “I have some free time _now_ if you needed a report keyed in, or something proof-read —”

“— No, nothing in the hopper right now.”

He leaned close, sweeping her with a look that made her feel gross.

“How’s the boyfriend?”

Rey’s neck flamed hot, but her voice was steady enough as she said, “Finn? He’s fine, thanks.”

“Everything still all right between the two of you?” Solo paused. “No trouble in paradise?”

She forced a laugh. “No, of course not. Why do you ask?”

“Well he’s a lawyer, isn’t he? I know lawyers,” he said in an unexpectedly grim voice. “My mother was one before she went into politics. They’re always busy. Always have time for their clients, but outside of that …”

Rey squirmed uneasily. The look on Solo’s face was strange. He seemed to have retreated into himself, touching on some dim, unpleasant memory. It was odd, and also it seemed counter to what Rey had heard secondhand about the late Senator Leia Organa-Solo, who was said to have doted on her family while fighting for human rights, more opportunities for women, and a stronger safety net for poor families. She had been largely expected to run for President in the next election. Her unexpected death a year earlier had been considered a blow to progressive efforts in the country, and it was said no one had quite yet filled the void.

“We manage.” Rey squelched a smile at the memory of their night together. She didn’t want Solo to think she was smiling at _him_. “When a relationship is important, you make the time.”

“Mmhm. But you’re not going with him to Canto Bight?”

Rey stiffened. “Excuse me?”

“Canto Bight. Big lawyers’ conference hosted by his firm.” Solo was studying her closely. “Family and romantic _partners_ are welcome. I was sure you’d put in time off so that you and Sven —”

“ _Finn_.”

“— Finn could enjoy yourselves. Take in the sights.” His inky eyebrows rose. “But you didn’t. He didn’t suggest you come along?”

Rey scowled at the fake concern in his voice.

“ _Mr. Solo_ , I don’t really think we should be discussing this.” Her voice was tight. “It’s personal, and your questions are making me uncomfortable.”

“I’m not trying to make you _uncomfortable_ , Rey.” One of his eyebrows remained high. “My mother knew just about every bigwig at every legal firm in this town. In fact, the founders of Kanata, Chewbacca, and Antilles are … _were_ personal friends of my parents. Obviously, I get news of their activities from time to time. I just assumed you were going along, that was all. I would have been _happy_ to approve your request for time off. _If_ you’d put one in.”

His voice dripped honey, and that made Rey want to squirm even more than the oiliness had.

Her brain worked feverishly. She couldn’t let Solo get the best of her. She’d already gotten herself into a mess by declaring, in a moment of desperation weeks ago when it seemed that Solo was moving in for the kill, that _yes_ she was dating someone, a gorgeous, up-and-coming attorney who was charming and funny and wonderful and …

And now _this_. Ben Solo knew people who knew Finn! Rey thought about how she’d thrown in Finn’s face the previous night that he _wasn’t_ her boyfriend, that their arrangement was just two adults deciding to have a little fun without any strings or labels. She couldn’t even imagine what Finn would say if he’d known that she had been using him as a human shield of sorts from her gross-ass boss’s horniness, hoping that the word ‘boyfriend’ would keep him at bay enough to not do something completely off the rails before she could find another job and get the fuck out of there.

She swallowed hard, collected herself, and spoke again with the same bland, efficient politeness.

“Finn is going to be in meetings and seminars the entire time. I don’t like hotel rooms and Canto Bight doesn’t really sound like my sort of place.”

“Really.” Solo looked somewhat skeptical. “Those gorgeous resorts? Heated pools, fountains, his-and-her massages …”

“And poor people on the fringes who barely have enough to eat.”

“Yes, most of the Cantonica Peninsula is filled with slums and drifters, but Canto Bight is pretty far removed from all of that, and his conference is being held in one of the best resorts in the area.”

He eyed her with a small smirk. “But maybe it’s just as well you won’t be there.”

Rey’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean?”

“Well, Canto Bight has a nice nightlife. _Very_ nice. Caters to a lot of exotic tastes.” Solo’s eyes were glowing indecently. “I haven’t been in a while, but there was a floor show I saw … let’s just say that it would have been awkward having my partner next to me — and I’m not talking _business_ partner.”

Rey kept her expression neutral. Every huge, swanked-out casino town had nude shows and titty bars. If Finn wanted to spend money seeing naked boobs and asses covered in glitter, so what? He was an adult, and — not that Solo would know — single. As she’d told Finn the night before, they had no claims on each other. His leisure time was his own.

 “Some of these shows even ask for volunteers. It’s … an _experience_.” Solo was leering again.  “I saw a few guys taking off their wedding bands. Guess they figured it would increase their chances of being picked.”

He turned his head suddenly, calling to a dark-haired man who was walking by with a stack of folders in his arms.

“Hey, Mitaka?”

The man stopped and looked over, his face registering surprise.

“Oh, uh, yes, Mr. Solo?”

“I was just talking with Rey here about Canto Bight.” Solo grinned at the other man. “You went there last year, didn’t you? For that sales conference?”

“Uh … yes sir.”

“And had a _good_ time? At some of the _special_ shows?”

The man’s face went somewhat mushy and his eyes glazed over at what was apparently a very pleasant memory.

“Oh _yes,_ sir.”

“Kept that out of your expense report, I bet.” Solo waited a beat. “And from whatever it was you told your wife, eh?”

Mitaka suddenly snapped out of it, looking like a person who’d been doused with a cold bucket of water. He seemed to suddenly notice Rey sitting there and his face turned the color of a boiled beet.

“Um …”

“Nevermind, Dop.” Solo grinned nastily. “Run along to the Chairman. I’m sure he’s been waiting on tenterhooks for whatever report that is you’re supposed to be delivering.”

The man scurried away. Solo watched him go, chortling under his breath.

“Idiot.”

“Mr. Solo, if there’s no work that you need me to do at the moment, then I have other things to attend to.” Rey was proud of how nonchalant she sounded. “Good morning.”

She swiveled away from him, staring steadily at her computer screen until she heard his footfalls moving away from her.

Glancing quickly over her shoulder to ensure that the asshole was in fact gone, Rey exhaled, feeling the tension leave her body. Good lord, was there no one in the world more odious than Ben Douchebag Solo?

Rey fished out her cell and looked disconsolately at her lock screen. It was a selfie of her and Finn shortly after they’d connected on an app called HookUUp that specialized in helping people find no-strings “arrangements.” She and Finn had been in a bar goofing around before they’d headed back to her place for another type of fun. Rey still wasn’t sure what had prompted her to take the picture, but she had to admit that was very cute. She and Finn were smiling up at the camera with their arms around each others’ shoulders, looking very much like a couple in love.

And it was that picture she’d decided to use as a decoy when she’d started the whole ‘boyfriend’ dodge. What person under the age of 25 _didn’t_ have four billion pictures of their significant other? Besides, she could always change the picture to something innocuous and if asked, say she was rotating her photos. That had been her reasoning at the time, but she hadn’t bothered to change her lock screen — and she kept her phone away from Finn. She was sure something like _this_ would provoke the sort of conversation that someone with _their_ arrangement needed to avoid at all costs.

She jumped a little when her phone buzzed with a text notification and frowned slightly when she saw it was from Finn. It was rare that he texted her during the workday. Slightly hesitant, Rey opened the text, which she noted had a picture attached. She stared at the photo for some moments. It showed a rooftop garden bordered with well-maintained dwarf palms. The skyline in the background placed the location as somewhere downtown. There were tables covered with fine linen and crystal glassware, and people in the shot were dressed as if they were having high tea. It all seemed familiar, somehow.

Rey’s eyes swept the photo again before reading the text beneath.

 _[_ ** _Finn 11:12am:_ ** _Hey! I’m at Harlen Gardens. Have to be here for a boring thing for a client, but food’s decent and it’s pretty in here. Tons of plants and flowers obv, thought of you. Hope your day’s good so far.]_

She smiled a little. Finn was likely looking to see if Solo had been sniffing around. He was so adorably transparent sometimes.

_[ **Replied 11:13am:** Ohhh, fancy. Too bad you’re not there at night. You’d be able to see the midnight blooming ink bush. Only one in this part of the country!]_

_[ **Finn 11.15am** : Hard pass. I don’t think flowers like me very much. I touched one and now my skin is all itchy. It doesn’t look like poison ivy. Look familiar?]_

Rey studied the picture that accompanied this text. His hand was covered in reddish wheals that stood out in stark relief on his dark skin. His hand rested next to a spray of yellow, bell-shaped flowers. She shook her head in slight bemusement. Now it made sense why Finn had opted not to go anywhere near her plants whenever he came over to her place.

_[ **Replied 11:16am:** That’s Scotch broom. A lot of people are allergic to it. Take some Benadryl and you’ll be fine.]_

_[ **Finn 11:18am:** Benadryl makes me sleepy af. I was hoping to see you tonight. If you’re up for it.]_

Rey flushed. In the beginning of their arrangement, they’d agreed that meeting up once a week was probably as much as either of them could handle, with work schedules and all. Lately, however, getting together twice a week hadn’t been … infrequent. And this would make a _third_ time that week.

_[ **Finn 11:19am:** I mean, since we won’t see each other almost at all next week? Maybe we could make this a part 2 to last night]_

Rey caught her lip between her teeth. The night before _had_ been pretty amazing — at least until Ben Solo had entered the conversation — and it wasn’t as if she had anything going on later, despite it being a Friday night.

The thing was, they’d also decided early on that weekends were hands-off for hookups. Too relationship-like. But if Finn was going to be gone on Monday, and then away through Thursday, then following _those_ rules would result in almost two weeks of not seeing him at all —

Rey was in the midst of a reply when a low rumble of a voice sounded over her shoulder.

“Am I interrupting something?”

Gritting her teeth, she placed her phone aside and turned around to see Ben Solo back again, sneer at the ready. Didn’t he have any of his _own_ work to do?

That question was answered for her when without warning, he dumped a stack of photocopies on her desk.

“I need these ads proofed. Nothing too strenuous, but there are 15 of them. Can you have them done this afternoon?”

“Of course.” She switched into “efficient employee” mode. “Light proofing or can I go to town?”

“Whatever you think is best. I’m sure some of them could use extra attention.” Solo paused. “I also wanted to apologize if I made you _uncomfortable_ earlier about my comments regarding Canto Bight.”

Rey tried not to show surprise. In all her time at Snoke Inc., Solo had _never_ apologized for a damn thing, including that sorry excuse for a goatee that he was trying to grow.

“Forget it. I already had,” she said crisply. “Anyway, I’ll have these for you by —”

“— After all. He’ll have a _friend_ with him to keep him company.” The slimy smirk was back. “I’m sure he’s told you about his _good pal_ Rose? Rose Tico?”

The hairs on the back of Rey’s neck prickled. If anything, Solo looked even smarmier than he had been earlier.

The name rang a bell, though. Finn had mentioned someone … it was on the tip of her tongue …

She almost smiled in relief when the information suddenly surfaced in her brain.

“Rose? Sure. They worked on a huge case together a few weeks ago. Yes, I assume she will be going to the conference, too. Why wouldn’t she?”

Solo’s grin went a little sour, which made Rey glow inwardly in triumph. And he thought he was going to trip her up? But really, thank goodness Finn liked to talk about his work a fair bit. Otherwise, it might have looked odd to not know the friends of her supposed _boyfriend._

But then, a sudden horrible thought struck her.

“Is Rose one of your _friends_ at Finn’s firm …?”

_Oh please, please, please no …_

“No, I’ve not actually met her. But I hear things. She’s a go-getter, apparently. And from what you’ve told me, your _boyfriend is_ on a fast track to becoming a pretty big deal. Building a rep as a closer and a promising litigator could be his ticket to the big time.”

“Well, he does great work.” Her voice was cool. It was annoying as hell to have Solo telling her things about Finn as if she were only vaguely familiar with him.

“He’s going to make partner by 35. _Or_ before.”

“I’m sure.” Solo smiled without showing his teeth. “I’m also sure Rose will be a big help in that … considering how _close_ they are. They’re both in KCA’s Associates of Color affinity group, aren’t they? I hear she’s been assigned to help him get acclimated to the firm and give him advice. Sort of a peer-mentor.” He paused. “Isn’t that how one of our Presidents and his wife started out?”

“I don’t know.” Rey was all but glowering. “I wasn’t born in this country, remember?”

Solo laughed, but there was a watchful look in his eyes.

“Did you know they eat lunch together almost every day? Your fellow and Rose Tico, I mean. Though I’m sure the President and his wife try to do that, too.”

Rey felt her throat constrict. Every day? Lunch with this girl every _day_?

Well, Finn was entitled to do as he pleased. And he and this Rose girl were friends, but …

_Every day?_

Rey could have throttled herself for staying silent for so long, because Solo seemed to sense that he’d hit a sensitive point.

“Well, anyway, _of course_ Finn isn’t going to get up to anything wild in Canto Bight. With the two of you so _happy_ , and all.” His voice oozed false sincerity. “I’m sure he and Rose will find ways of keeping each other company. I’ll need those ads by 2 p.m. Thanks.”

He walked off. She could tell by the slight bounce in his gait that he was extremely satisfied with himself.

Rey swallowed down a lump in her throat and tried to arrange her thoughts. On the surface, this meant nothing. Unlike Snoke Inc., which didn’t have a paid lunch hour for employees, necessitating a quick lunch at one’s desk, Finn had a full hour for lunch. He was a foodie, too, always trying to persuade her to try cuisines she’d never heard of. So yes, he’d go to lunch, and if he had a friend, it made sense to have lunch together.

But …

 _Every … day_?

Back when they were finalizing their agreement, there had been one hard and fast rule: Theirs was to be a monogamous arrangement. Even though Finn wore condoms each time they had sex, they both felt that it was just less chancy in every respect to have just one partner. They’d both agreed, however, that at any time, if either of them found a person they wanted to get serious with, their arrangement would end then and there. They’d even shaken hands on it.

And then about two minutes later, Finn’s head had been between her thighs, but that was beside the point.

If Finn was sweet on this Rose — _if_ he was — it was news to Rey. She was sure Finn wouldn’t be the sort of man to go behind her back on their arrangement. It could only mean that he and this Rose were friends and co-workers and _only_ friends and co-workers.

Her face paled. _Unless_ it was going to Canto Bight that would seal the deal. The lights, the glamour, the atmosphere dripping with sensuality …

Maybe Finn wasn’t sure about where things stood with Rose now, but this trip was going to be when he made up his mind …

With a start, Rey realized that she had not finished answering Finn’s last text. She glanced at her phone and saw that he had not texted her in the interim. After a moment of thought, she erased the message she had started, which was to accept his invitation ask him what time he was thinking about getting together.

_[ **Replied 11:27am** : Sorry. Busy day at work and just want to crash later. Enjoy the gardens. Hope the Benadryl works out.]_

_[ **Finn 11:32am** : OK, np. Have a good rest of the day. A friend had some cream in her purse that helped the itching. Thanks tho!]_

Rey glared at the response. A _friend_ , eh? In _her_ purse?

It was only with supreme effort that she didn’t text back: _Hope you and Rose have a nice lunch today._

Rey removed the temptation entirely by putting her phone in her desk. After powering it down.


	2. Tearin' Up My Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a small note to thank all for the kudos and comments. And also to mention that I've broken this up along the lines where I thought it seemed to naturally break, so some chapters will be longer (or shorter) than others.

Rey had planned an action-packed weekend. First, a trip to the farmer’s market to get salad veg and see if there were any new succulents that she could cry over not being able to have in her tiny, light-starved apartment, followed by a visit to several online job sites to apply en masse to anything that didn’t require actual wading through raw sewage (though she was starting to wonder if she was being too picky). And the piece de resistance — glaring at the walls as the hours ticked down toward her fate of going to work at Snoke Inc. bright and early Monday morning.

Truly exciting.

But it didn’t quite work out that way. In the midst of her planning, her thoughts had been filled with Finn. They had not communicated at all since that Friday morning text flurry. Not hearing from him was a little unusual. Even though their arrangement frowned on weekend hookups, there was almost always a text or two during the days they didn't see each other. But when Rey had turned her phone on later Friday afternoon, there had been nothing further from Finn. Saturday had come and gone, too, without any word, and Rey wasn’t about to text _him_. She’d spent Saturday watching funny videos on YouTube and trying not to wonder how Finn was spending _his_ weekend.

Browsing the farmer’s market earlier that day and seeing smiley couples holding hands and feeding each other cherry tomatoes, Rey could hardly keep from gagging. But she’d also had an epiphany: Finn was not just hot and a great fuck, he was also a _good_ person. If he was interested in a relationship with this Rose woman — or anyone else, for that matter — then she had to trust that he would just come right out and tell her so. It wasn’t going to do her any good to be anxious or even … _jealous_ … of a potential partner in Finn’s future. If he tried to deceive her, she’d find out. She always did when people tried to pull shit over on her. And if that happened, she’d have to admit that she’d been wrong about him.

But she didn’t think she was, and therefore, worrying about what he _might_ or _might not_ feel about this Rose chick …

(Who she _might_ have looked up on the firm’s website, and _might_ have been slightly depressed to discover was only about three years older than Finn, had a list of accomplishments a mile wide, was super cute, and was someone she could totally see walking hand in hand with Finn at the farmer’s market, being completely disgustingly adorable while playfully arguing over what flavor Greek yogurt to buy)

… was a waste of her time and energy.

Rey had been well on schedule for her weekend in staring at the wall and dreading work the next morning when a call from Finn came in the early evening. At first, Rey thought she’d been hallucinating. She and Finn rarely actually called each other — texts and snaps generally were sufficient. She felt slightly alarmed, wondering what would necessitate a phone call. Was Rose at his place? Had he proposed to her? Was he now calling to tell her that it was all over between them?

She’d just managed to answer the phone before it would have gone to voicemail, her heart in her throat. Before Finn had said a dozen words, she knew none of her imagined scenarios were the reason for the call, which relieved her more than she cared to admit — but not for long. Finn had sounded slightly harried. The building manager with whom he was going to leave his spare key and fob to enter the complex had been robbed and hit over the head by someone claiming to want to view an apartment. He was going to be okay,  but the onsite office was going to be shut for an unknown amount of time and anything building-related outsourced to another company. The only neighbor with whom Finn was friendly was away on a business trip of his own, so he wanted to know if he could come over to hers and drop off the keys that evening.

Rey looked around at her apartment in mild dismay even as she agreed to the impromptu visit. Her place wasn’t really a mess. It was too small to get messy, really, being more of an expanded cubicle than the “cozy studio apartment” in the online ad she'd answered. Still, she always felt strange having Finn over. She couldn’t help but compare her poky living space to his sprawling duplex townhouse, and was sure he looked down his nose at it. But usually he was too busy fucking her to pay much attention to the state of the place. She cursed herself after ending the call for not suggesting that they meet outside for a quicker hand-off.

She had enough time to straighten up, Febreeze, and crack open the one window in her living room that opened slightly before Finn arrived. He looked a bit tired and was clearly still upset about the events of the day. After downing a grapefruit Lacroix — Rey’s one indulgence — he seemed to relax. It was then that Rey learned that Finn was quite friendly with the building manager, who was expected to recover, but was understandably shaken by what had transpired. The poor guy had a mild heart attack only a few months earlier,  _after_ his home had been burglarized. It was, Finn said with a sigh, clearly not this dude's year.

Finn gave a rueful smile. “Sorry for the abrupt change in plans. Were you having a chill weekend?”

She shrugged. “I suppose. More than chill than _yours_ , apparently.”

“Yeah, well that wouldn't be too hard." He half grinned. "Today was crazy with all the police and ambulances milling around. I was the only one who knew Jem’s wife’s number, so I was talking to the cops for awhile after the EMTs left. And yesterday, I spent most of the day packing and rehearsing a presentation I have to give for this splinter practice group from Naboo Falls.”

Rey watched him out of the corner of her eye. “Did you end up doing anything on Friday?”

“Not really. After that Harlen Gardens thing, I had a few meetings. Nothing showstopping.” Finn lifted his shoulders. “After work, I went out with a few people from the office. It was somebody’s birthday, so we just went to some random bar for happy hour.”

“That sounds fun.” Rey cleared her throat. “Whose birthday?”

“Guy named Jake Leeds. He’s an associate in White Collar, hired a month or so after I was. He seems cool. We haven’t worked together, but we have a few friends in common at the firm,” Finn said. “I didn’t stay long. I wasn’t really up for it, so I cut out after about an hour and went home, played some Battlefront II, caught up on _Westworld_ , had something to eat, and went to bed.”

“You leaving so early must have disappointed your friends.” She swung her legs round so that she was facing him. “Did they say anything?”

“Nah. I really don’t think they cared. I mean, I’d told Kay and Rose I was gonna dip after like a beer and a half. We were all tired. It had been a long day.”

Rey’s ears perked up at the mention of ‘Rose,’ but before she could say anything, Finn rested his hand gently on her knee, unease in his dark eyes.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t get together. I was thinking about you. Your last text sounded like you were dealing with some shit at work, but I didn’t want to hit you with a ton of questions. You wanna talk about it?”

Rey’s face warmed. She was acutely aware of his hand on her knee, and even more acutely aware that she wanted to ride him into the sunset like —

She brutally derailed that train of thought.

“Nothing to talk about," she said offhandedly. "It just gets busy there unexpectedly sometimes, you know? You think it’s going to be a quiet day, and then the shit hits the fan and you basically just have to figure out a way to muscle through it.”

Finn opened his mouth, but appeared to change his mind about what he was going to say.

“You know, I was talking to one of the docents at Harlen Gardens. I wanted to know more about that midnight blooming plant you were talking about. She said it was one of the rarest plants in the world. Apparently, if you breathe in the fragrance from the flowers straight on, you could fall into a coma. That true?”

“Not quite. That’s only if you’re in, like, a _field_  of them.” Rey grimaced in annoyance. She hated when people asserted expertise when they really didn’t know what they were talking about.

“The pheromones can be toxic in large doses, but you’d literally have to be surrounded and basically sticking your nose in four or five bushes at the same time to be affected that way," she said.  "And even then, it’s more likely you’d just get a really bad headache — not fall unconscious.”

Finn looked at her admiringly. “I told the docent I had a friend who knew more about plants and flowers than probably most people in the world. She said you should stop by and fill out an application. They’re always looking for people to help out.”

“Volunteering?” Rey shook her head. “Thanks, but I just don’t have the time _or_ money to do that …”

“No, like an actual _job_. They need people to design lessons for schoolkids and do e-learning and help with their social media. You’re a writer, and you know all that stuff.”

“Finn, I’m not a _writer_. I’m a Marketing Assistant who writes stupid ads and proofs reports for a company that makes weed killer and all other shitty chemical things that will probably poison the Earth well past the time our great-grandchildren have great-grandchildren.”

His eyebrows shot up. “ _Our_ great grandchildren? Um, are you trying to tell me something?”

Rey went crimson, but playfully nudged his knee.

“No! You _know_ what I mean! Anyway, obviously Harlen Gardens needs help if they’re giving that sort of misinformation to people, but I doubt they’d hire someone like me. No prior experience in anything specifically like that _and_ no college degree? And _don’t_ tell me that my accent will get me by. Accents like mine are a dime a dozen in a city this big. It’s not going to scream ‘posh and upper class.’”

“Who told you that?” Finn’s eyes clouded. “Was it that asshole at your job? Did he at least leave you alone on Friday?”

Rey hesitated. She didn’t really want to get into the whole Ben Solo situation with Finn, particularly after the way their initial conversation about the man had gone. But she wondered if there might be a way to find out more about Finn’s … _friendship_ with this Rose girl. Just out of sheer curiosity, of course.

“Solo did stop by my cube. He had work for me to do, but he also brought up Canto Bight.”

“He did?” Finn’s brow furrowed. “Why?”

Rey hesitated. She _could_ tell him that Ben Solo knew people at his law firm, but then Finn would understandably want to know how he _or_ his law firm had come up in conversation, and _that_ would unravel the whole ‘boyfriend’ subterfuge, and … no. Just no.

“Well … Snoke Inc. had a sales conference there a year or so ago,” she said, threading her way carefully through the conversation. “There's a guy — sort of a flunky to one of the top flunkies — called Mitaka. He was passing by when Solo was at my cubicle, and Solo asked him how he liked Canto Bight, sort of in a smarmy way. Apparently, Mitaka went to one of those _special shows._ ” She made quote marks in the air. “You know, where married men take off their wedding bands and … _stuff_ happens.”

“Oh. The live sex shows?”

“I guess.” Her voice was dry. “Already bought your tickets?”

Finn laughed. “Not my thing. Nothing against people who are into public sex, but I’ve never been a voyeur or an exhibitionist. Though married dudes being shady aren’t cool. This Mitaka guy is married?”

“Apparently.”

“Is _anybody_ at your job _not_ a complete asshole? Other than you, I mean?”

She folded her hands primly. “ _I_ can't be an asshole sometimes?”

"Nope. With you, it's _adorable petulance_. Assholishness is mainly for people who ..."

"... You don't want to fuck?" Her mouth curved in a knowing smirk.

He snickered. "Pleading the Fifth on that one. Sorry."

“Uh-huh. Anyway, Solo was saying that he didn’t think Canto Bight was a very _romantic_ place. You know, not a couples’ destination.”

“Yeah, it’s not, so much. Why would he be telling _you_ that, though?”

“Why does he do anything?” She waved her hand vaguely. “But I, um, mentioned I had a friend who was going there for work soon, and he said you’d have a lot to occupy you, if you were going to be by yourself.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not gonna have a ton of free time, and like I said before, I’m not into what Canto Bight has to offer. It’ll be a pretty dry, boring experience — for me at least.”

“Even though you’ll have friends there with you?” Rey glanced at him quickly. “Like ... the ones you hung out with on Friday?”

“I’m not sure what they have going on. Kay’s leaving the conference early because she’s got a deal closing soon. Snap broke his leg, so he’s not gonna be doing too much outside the resort. He wants to hit the casinos, though. Says he has a ‘system’ for craps. I hope he has a ‘system’ for being broke, too, because that’s the only thing that’s going to happen there. And Rose _hates_ Canto Bight. Says it’s like a hemorrhoid in the asscrack of the country and that she wished she could set fire to the whole damned place. I’m surprised she’s even going, but she said she doesn’t have a choice if she wants to make senior associate next quarter. Plus she said she wants to see the bigwigs flashing their money around so she can give them all the finger — behind their backs, I guess.”

Rey was half-relieved that Finn had brought up this Rose girl of his own accord, and half-annoyed that he’d spent more time talking about her than on any of the other people he’d mentioned.

“Rose?” Rey pretended to think. “You’ve mentioned someone called Rose a couple of times, I think. Didn’t you work on some big case with her? About credit cards?”

“Prepaid cards. We were able to hit this company that was ripping off its customers. We got them to agree to one of the biggest settlements for noncompliance in the industry.” Finn lifted a brow at her. “You remember me talking about that? I’m a little surprised."

“Surprised why?” She frowned. “I _do_ listen when you tell me important things about your work, you know.”

“Yeah, but I seem to remember that when I was mentioning that, you were a few seconds away from sitting on my dick.”

Rey blushed under his knowing laughter.

“Okay, _and?_ I _can_ multitask, you know. Fucking you doesn’t affect my hearing.”

“Good to know. It affects mine sometimes, though. Especially when you’re shouting right in my ear. Do you know you can sound like a tea kettle sometimes when you’re about to come?”

Her face felt hot enough to melt. “ _Excuse_ me?”

“It’s not a complaint.” He raised his hands, palms up. “I like it. It’s sort of like … a sexy tea kettle!”

Finn was laughing, but his eyes were glimmering. Rey swallowed hard. She knew that look. She knew that little half-twist of his gorgeous, perfectly shaped lips. And she knew that if he so much as crooked his little finger, she’d be begging him to crook it inside of her …

“You’re so corny sometimes,” she said, leaning toward him. “But it works for you. _Why_ does it work for you?”

His hand was gentle in her hair and his eyes were shuttered slightly as their faces drifted closer.

“Don’t know. _You’re_ gonna have to tell _me_.”

That ended talk of tea kettles for the next little while.

 

* * *

 

Rey had never been a cuddler after sex – until Finn.

When they had set up the rules of their arrangement, one of the items Finn had been rather insistent on was a short period of rest after sex for them to catch their breath and just relax. Rey had been mildly surprised at how okay she’d been with that. It was nice to be held, nice to have her back stroked gently, nice to rest her cheek on Finn’s chest and listen to his heartbeat. She was vaguely aware that maybe _that_ aspect of their arrangement could have been talked through a bit more, but since Finn hadn’t been inclined to mention it, she’d decided to table the discussion unless and until there seemed like there might be a problem.

Finn’s voice, low and thick with contentment, floated somewhere above her head.

“You should come back home with me.”

Rey raised her head at the words and stared into his face. Finn wore the same blissed-out, sated expression that he usually had after they had sex, but his eyes were not as unfocused as usual. His fingertips were skimming her shoulder and his voice was gravelly, but also a bit more earnest than she would have expected.

“Come home with you? What are you talking about?”

“You’re going to be housesitting starting tomorrow. You could just come back with me now. Spend the night …”

Rey sighed softly. That had been another of their “rules” at the very beginning: No sleepovers. But it was enforced on a case-by-case basis. Once, a freak snowstorm had stranded her at Finn’s place. Another time, they’d both been too exhausted to move and had fallen asleep in a tangle of limbs, congealed drool, and other bodily fluids. So, they’d sort of made that “rule” a “suggestion.” Most of the time after their hookups, they got dressed and whoever was the guest went back to his or her place of origin, as Rey had done the other night. But if there were times one of them was too tired to move or things had gotten so _acrobatic_ that they could only collapse into a tired, orgasm-addled heap and go to sleep, it wasn’t a big deal. It didn’t mean anything.

“Finn, I’m not even packed yet. It’s …” She squinted at the clock on the stack of books that was serving as a nightstand. “… barely 8 o’clock. I still need to do laundry, figure out what I need to take for the week …”

“You can do laundry at mine. You wouldn’t have to lug all your stuff to the sketchy place down the street.”

“I’m _not_ using your washer and dryer. They’re way too fancy!” Her voice was slightly chagrined. “I’d be afraid of breaking something or putting too much detergent or whatever. And the laundromat is _not_ sketchy. It’s just a little … grungy. Everything works, and the change guy is super sweet as long as you don’t ask him about hockey or whether pineapple on pizza is valid.”

“Rey, I have a regular washing machine and dryer.” He was grinning. “Same equipment the laundromat has, only mine don’t take quarters and there’s about 99% less graffiti. And pineapple on pizza is totally valid, by the way.”

“Regular? Finn, there’s a cycle _just_ for towels! Towels! And don’t get me started on all the other million buttons,” Rey huffed, pushing a handful of sweaty hair out of her face. “I feel more comfortable with my grungy laundromat, thanks very much. I disagree about pineapple on pizza, fyi, but I won’t complain about _you_ eating pineapple, for obvious reasons.”

His face was briefly blank, but his eyes sparked suddenly and then they were both laughing, hiding their faces in each other’s necks.

When the laughter subsided, Rey rested her head in the crook between Finn’s neck and shoulder.

“That said, if you want to hang out here for awhile, you can.” Her fingers traced an old scar right below his left collarbone. “You don’t have to leave right this second.”

She was glad she wasn’t looking at him at that moment. She wasn’t sure what her face would give away.

“Mmmm … okay. I _am_ pretty comfortable.” He nuzzled the top of her head and burrowed in closer. “I could take an Uber back home. I’m done packing, but there’s a couple things I want to check before I leave. My flight’s at 7 in the morning.”

Rey took a breath. Let it out slowly.

“If you wanted to stay over tonight, I could just run you to your place to get your bags and then drop you off at the airport tomorrow morning.” Her voice held a slight tremor. She hoped Finn didn't notice. “It’s on the way to my work, and anyway, I don’t mind going in early. It’s easier to get work done when the office is empty.”

“Thanks, but that’s okay.” His voice was drowsy. “I’ve got a ride. Rose is picking me up. We’re flying out together.”

Rey drew back as sharply as if she’d been burned. But Finn was unaware. He yawned and turned his face into the nearest pillow, murmuring something Rey could not catch.

After a few moments when it was clear he was fast asleep, she flung herself out of bed, into a pair of shorts and a shirt, and grabbed her laundry bag and change purse.  Her head was pounding and the skin of her face felt too tight. The slightly chilly night air didn't help matters.

When Rey entered the small space, it was eerily quiet and almost deserted, the only sound coming from a lone dryer and a football game on the small TV above the cash register that no one was watching.

As she shoved her clothing into the nearest washing machine, Rey decided not to take offense when the change guy took one look at her and decided against any conversation.


	3. Just Don't Tell Me That

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're at the halfway point! Thanks to everyone who has read, commented, and/or kudoed!

The next two days were not banner events in the annals of the life of Rey Walker. Not because there was nothing of note that happened. Quite the opposite, in fact. Still, she would have loved to scrub those 48 hours completely from her mind.

Two nights earlier at her apartment, Rey had tossed and turned as Finn slept next to her — it was interesting that he didn’t snore, because she knew _her_ snores sounded like a car muffler — willing herself to calm down. Reminding herself that it was silly to be jealous over a situation that did not call for jealousy, Rey made efforts to put thoughts of Finn flying across country with this Rose woman out of her mind. The trip had been planned _before_ they’d even met. So, it was just idiocy to get angry that he was following through with something that had been arranged ages ago. And, Rey had reminded herself as she eventually drifted into an uneasy slumber, Finn was a good guy. If he wanted to end things between them because he had feelings for someone else, he would do so. Finn wasn’t the type to string someone along, in either direction.

The next morning, Finn had woken her by trying to be careful _not_ to. In Jakku Gulch, people deliberately trying to be silent were generally up to no good. Rey’s sense of hearing had sharpened at an early age as a result, and she was easily able to pick up sounds that denoted deliberate caution. She awoke just as Finn was getting into his trousers, startling him. He’d apologized for waking her, which she’d waved aside, and they sat for a while, talking quietly in a grayish darkness that gradually became edged in pinks and reds.

Finn was not happy about having to go to Canto Bight, which gave Rey unaccountable pleasure. But that slight edge of satisfaction eroded into guilt when Finn admitted that his issues with the trip centered on the fact that he was not the biggest fan of flying. He’d planned on taking a sleeping pill, hopefully not waking up until wheels were on the ground in Cantonica.

That had surprised Rey. She _adored_ flying. Not that she’d had the cash to take many flights, but she’d been on two short rides in her life, courtesy of Snoke Inc., and had been enraptured by the sensations, the sounds, the sights. It had never occurred to her that anyone could _not_ have that feeling, or even be so concerned about flying that they would rather be unconscious for the duration of it.

As he was kissing her goodbye, Finn had sheepishly mentioned that there was an app that could track flights, and that some people who were nervous flyers asked their friends and/or family to do so for good luck. Rey couldn’t help but grin at the almost bashful expression on his handsome face and volunteered to do so, getting a smile in return that made her stomach flutter.

When he’d gone, she’d sat alone in her apartment, breathing in the scent of the two of them that lingered on her sheets and sighing at the memory of his hands and mouth on her body. She’d decided to go into work early anyway, casting a more than casual glance at the airport when she passed the exit for it on the highway.

Once at the office, she fired up the tracking app that Finn had mentioned and typed in his flight number, refreshing during the morning through the BOARDING, ON RUNWAY, TAXIING messages and feeling a sense of unaccountable relief when the notification changed to IN FLIGHT. Several times during a strangely busy morning, she’d checked the app, watching the small plane icon wind its way across a scrolling map of the country, and skirting mountains before making the slow, sweeping turn south that would take it into the lowlands and, eventually, the Cantonica Peninsula.

Finn’s plane landed 15 minutes late, and Rey grinned when her phone purred a few moments after the DEPLANING status flashed on the app.

[ **Finn 12.12pm** : _Made It!_ ]

[ **Replied 12:14pm** : _I know. You got there at 9:04 local time. Did you get a good nap on the plane?_ ]

[ **Finn 12:17pm** : _Not really. Rose and I started talking and I forgot to take the pill. The ride went by pretty fast._ ]

Rey’s smile dropped like a forgotten bra. She was clenching her jaw so hard that she nearly missed the next message.

[ **Finn 12:18pm** : _Thanks for tracking me. You’re the best! Have a good rest of the day._ ]

The rest of the work day passed relatively without incident. That evening, Rey stumbled past the gates of Finn’s development exhausted and pissed. Leaving work, she’d initially forgotten she was staying at his place and so had to turn around and wait like an asshole in cross-town traffic.

She arrived at his gorgeous townhouse to peace, quiet, and a beautiful moth orchid plant in a stylish translucent purple pot on his dining room table. Underneath the plant was a note.

_Rey,_

_Thanks again for agreeing to do this. I know you prefer plants to cut flowers, and I wanted to give you a housesitting present. There’s tortellini from that Italian place you like in the fridge. Just heat and eat. You need anything, text or call me._

_Finn_

Rey fingered one of the blossoms and sighed. It seemed so strange to be in Finn’s home with no Finn, but she was almost too tired to think about it. She found the tortellini, ate it while half-watching an episode of _Psych_ on Hulu she realized she’d never seen, and decided to call it an early night.

Crawling into Finn’s bed, she was mildly disappointed that the sheets smelled of lavender soap and dryer sheets rather than of him. Rey understood that it was only polite for him to have washed his linens beforehand, but she felt oddly bereft.

Before she went to sleep, she checked the clock. Canto Bight was three hours behind. It was only a little before nine o’clock there. She figured there wouldn’t be any harm in texting.

[ **Sent 11:34pm:** H _ey thanks for the food and the plant. Having fun yet?_ ]

Fifteen minutes passed. Then 20. Then a half-hour.

Rey frowned and turned off the light, trying to get comfortable. Obviously, Finn was busy, or eating, or …

_… banging Rose or at one of the titty bars or forgetting I exist or …_

She turned and put a pillow over her head, as if doing so could block out the dark thoughts winding through her head. It was a very long time before she could get to sleep.

 

* * *

 

The following day began inauspiciously. Rey had forgotten completely about the text she’d sent Finn the night before until she’d spotted her phone and realized she’d neglected to plug it in before she’d gone to bed. Cursing herself into full wakefulness, she jammed the plug in with a bit more force than was necessary, and the screen lit up, highlighting a missed text notification.

[ **Finn 12:22am** : _Good, I’m glad you liked it. It’s ok. Wouldn’t call it fun. Meetings nonstop. At a dinner now honoring a partner. WYD?_ ]

Rey considered a moment. He hadn’t sent a follow-up text, which made sense if he’d been at an event when he’d sent the first one. And he might have figured that it was too late to text her again anyway.

She decided not to pay too much attention to how relieved she felt that he was at some work-related event, and not out throwing dollar bills at some girl’s boobs — or, perhaps, plowing his co-worker.

After another minute’s deliberation, Rey opted not to text back right away, as she figured that Finn was in bed … alone hopefully, er, _possibly_ … and sleeping. Getting ready for the day, she tried not to linger in his shower. It was a tough proposition. The shower was huge, edged in cream-colored marble, had one of those benches you could sit on and just let the water wash over you, _and_ one of those huge rainshower heads that made the water feel like gold-plated fucking _heaven._

As she soaped up, Rey tried to put all thoughts out of her mind except for what lay ahead at work.

She also tried to not pay too much attention to how much she was fantasizing about how it might be to actually _live_ in a place like Finn’s. To be able to take a shower like this _every_ day? And just exist in such a perfect space? It'd be a dream. Would be a bit boring without Finn there, though. Maybe they could be roommates? Did a hot-shot lawyer even _need_ a roommate? If she pitched it to Finn as a beneficial arrangement in which he would, among other things, inherit an herb garden for the meals he liked to cook on occasion, might he go for …

Deciding that it was not early enough in the day for her to start that sort of fruitless pondering, Rey hastily exited the shower and hurriedly dressed. She drove to work almost on autopilot, mentally preparing herself for another _swell_ day at good old Snoke Inc.

She’d barely gotten to her cubicle when she saw Ben Solo standing on the other side of the office. Her stomach tightened, but she relaxed when she noticed he was not alone. In fact, he wasn’t even looking in her direction. He was in deep conversation with a woman dressed in a gray business suit. She was almost as tall as Solo, maybe his age or slightly older, and had shiny dark hair up in a twist held by a barrette that Rey was sure hadn’t been picked up at CVS.

Rey’s forehead creased in thought. She knew who the woman was, of course. Everyone did. It was Orta Tarkin, the chief of staff to Chairman Snoke himself. She’d been at the company for an unspecified number of years, and her appearance on any floor other than the fifth — which was the executive floor — were regarded as visits from the angel of death.

No one quite knew what the duties were of a “chief of staff” to a person who barely put in an appearance most days at his own company, but one of Tarkin’s main jobs seemed to be to give people the metaphorical axe. She showed up, and by the time she left, the headcount was at least a person down. Rey didn’t think Orta Tarkin had been on her floor in at least six months, when a technician had been sacked for taking too many paperclips.

Rey stood to grab a cup of coffee from the urn nearby and froze. Ben Solo and Orta Tarkin were now looking directly at her. Solo was saying something while not taking his eyes of Rey, and the woman’s dark gaze slid incuriously over her before she turned to answer whatever it was Solo was saying.

Her throat went as dry as the Gulch’s main water reservoir in summer as the two executives picked her apart with their eyes. Just when she thought she was going to spontaneously combust under their combined gaze, Tarkin said something, laid her hand on Solo’s shoulder before striding off to the lifts. Rey thought the gesture had been a bit proprietary.

Rey hurriedly filled her coffee cup, dreading having to speak to Solo at all. But much to her surprise — and somewhat oddly, her unease — Solo turned and walked in the other direction without a backward glance.

Back at her desk, Rey stared at her computer screen and tried to compose herself. She’d done nothing wrong. Her work was good. There had been no complaints, no lateness, no dark marks on her record. Why would _she_ be fired?

But why else would Orta Tarkin be on _her_ floor? And looking at her like someone who was benevolently deciding to use bug spray rather than squashing a particularly annoying insect? It was also the first time that Rey could remember Solo ever passing up a chance to annoy her.

Not for the first time, Rey considered her impressions of Orta Tarkin, made in the few moments over the past two years that she had gotten a fleeting glimpse of her. She was attractive with a striking face and cheekbones that looked as if they could slice the air. In fact, she was rather hard-edged all over, she adopting somewhat severe styles: pointy shoes and fitted, almost militaristic suits. She was always well put together, but in a way that seemed almost unapproachable. Rey had heard rumors that she was so high up in the organization at such a young age because she had connections and came from a great deal of wealth. Her great grandfather had been a governor, or something of that sort.

Rey thought that she and Ben Solo almost looked as if they could be related. They were both tall, dark haired, lean-faced, and hard-eyed. But on occasion, Rey had seen the ice in Orta Tarkin’s expression melt while looking at Ben Solo. There had been that little gesture with her hand lingering on Solo’s shoulder. Not for the first time, Rey wondered if something had gone on with them — or was going to. Ben Solo seemed to like to “hunt” among the weaker and younger members of the Snoke Inc. herd, but maybe he’d finally come to his senses and was exploring a relationship with someone in his age range and clout level — at least within the company.

Or … maybe her ‘boyfriend’ subterfuge was working?

Rey took out her phone and looked down at it with a small smile. It really _was_ a cute picture of her and Finn. To the outside eye, no one would be able to say that they were not a couple completely enamored of each other.

Rey was reaching for her coffee cup when her terminal beeped with a message from the company’s internal communication system. Opening the notification, Rey was stunned to read a tersely worded announcement that Dopheld Mitaka, assistant to the assistant head of sales, was leaving Snoke Inc. effective immediately, and the company wished him well in his future endeavors.

Rey slowly shook her head. The angel of death had struck again.

 

* * *

 

“Pizza, Finn. That’s all I want. _Just_ pizza. So much for being able to order anything I want on this thing.” Rey ran her thumb down the menu on her phone, wrinkling her nose in distaste at the choices that scrolled by. “What kind of delivery place calls itself _Beluga_? Pretentious, much? No wonder I’d never downloaded this app before.”

“Rey, there’s, like, 14 different pizza places on there.” Finn’s coolly amused voice came through loud and clear on speaker. “Just pick one. What’s so hard?”

“What’s _hard_ is that these are all so fancy.” She squinted. “Cornmeal crust. Bufala de mozzarella. Pecorino-dusted. _Sopressata_. And that’s just _one_ place. They’re all like this! I just want a _pizza_ : Crust, tomato sauce, cheese, _maybe_ some pepperoni or mushrooms.”

“I bet some of those places would even let you get pineapple, if you asked.” The teasing quality of his voice intensified. “Oh, and I think sopressata is another word for pepperoni, fyi.”

“Ugh. Fine, _Counselor_. I’ll go with the gluten-free, garlic-flecked crusted pizza with figs, prosciutto, ‘white sauce’ and shaved truffles.”

“That sounds kind of nasty, actually.”

“See? My thoughts exactly!” She stabbed a finger in the air. “And you turn up your nose at Domino’s. Yes, it’s greasy and kind of gross, but it gets the job done.”

“If ‘getting the job done’ means testing the limits of the human digestive system, then yeah, you’ve got a point. Domino’s can’t be beat there.”

“You're such a food snob. Why do I even put up with you?”

“Because when you’re going down on me, I’m not hotboxing you because I eat nasty-ass pizza?”

“Ew! You don’t get bonus points for not being a pig, Finn.”

But she snickered and rolled over onto her stomach, swiping the delivery app away, and maximizing the Skype window. She thought maybe she’d nix the pizza and go for Chinese. Then she could have leftovers for lunch the next day.

She and Finn had been Skyping almost since she arrived at his home after what had been a fairly quiet day at work. She’d answered his text from earlier that morning after lunch, and they’d exchanged a text or two before Finn announced he was being pulled away for a “workshop.” Coming back to Finn’s place, she’d been startled by a stringbean of a man who seemed to be doing something to the door. He’d introduced himself as Jem, the property manager, and said he was fixing the handle of Finn’s front door. Rey had noticed that morning that it was a little loose and had planned to tackle it herself with a screwdriver and some Liquid Nails.

The man had ambled off soon afterward, but Rey had been suspicious and had texted Finn, who confirmed that her unexpected visitor truly was the property manager. He had been released from the hospital a day early and was already back to work.

The texts gave way to a Skype session when Finn wanted to get her opinion on an outfit to wear to a charity event he had to attend. Rey thought he looked good, if a little tired. He was in constant meetings and seminars, and she understood why he’d said the trip wasn’t going to be some pleasure jaunt. The connection wasn’t amazing, but he’d given her a quick tour of his hotel room. It was plush, and luxurious, and just a touch obnoxious. Rey rather believed that the one room might be emblematic of Canto Bight as a whole.

“What are _you_ having for dinner, by the way?” she asked. “Another fancy spread like last night?”

“Nah, this thing is being held at an amusement park the firm rented out, so the food’ll be ‘carnival style.’ Hot dogs, hamburgers, funnel cake, that kind of thing.”

“Sounds delicious! I’d take that over truffles and _sopressata_ any day.”

“Same. But I have to watch it. I think I’m getting a little soft. I’m not a kid anymore.”

He patted his stomach. Rey couldn’t see the slightest bit of pudge there, but his phone tilted got a nice view of how well his suit fitted him. Particularly his fantastic shoulders. It was fitting pretty nicely on the lower half, too …

“Yeah, wow. Twenty-six. You’re nearly ancient, Finn.” She smirked. “Almost time for the little blue pills, I guess.”

“Ha! You _wish_.”

The perspective of the camera suddenly changed. His face, his eyes slightly watchful, filled her screen again.

“Anything _interesting_ happen at work today?”

Rey grimaced. She knew what he was getting at, but even the thought of mentioning Ben Solo was making her stomach turn, and she wanted to have _some_ sort of dinner that night. But then, something occurred to her.

“Actually, yeah …”

She told him about Mitaka’s unceremonious exit from the company, giving some background on Orta Tarkin, and a few tidbits on what she’d heard around the office later. Mitaka had been a hard worker and dependable, but some of his expenditures on work-related trips had been called into question, and so he’d been given the hook. Rey speculated that Ben Solo’s not-so-subtle teasing of Mitaka earlier was actually a veiled warning that he was on thin ice. Solo seemed the sort who liked to play with his food.

Finn’s mouth pursed into a thoughtful grimace, but he said nothing until she’d finished speaking.

“If they’re _just_ catching on to him cooking the books, then he’s either super-clever, or that company has a shitty accounting department. Every coffee bean in the latte machine has to be accounted for at KCA, or it’s somebody’s ass.”

“Maybe they weighed Mitaka’s usefulness against how much he was gaming the company and decided that they’d take their chances training up another toady.” Rey’s voice darkened. “There’s no real shortage.”

“Hey, wait, did you say Orta Tarkin?” Finn’s eyes were interested. “ _Tarkin_? One of _the_ Tarkins?”

“I don’t know what you mean by one of _the_ Tarkins,” she said slowly, her scalp tingling.  “That’s her last name, anyway.”

“Oh, so you don’t know if she’s from the same family as Wilhuff Tarkin?”

“If this Wilhuff Tarkin was a governor, then she’s his great-grand-something. I heard her bragging in the canteen once about some hereditary mountain cabin that has his statue outside it.”

“Yeah.” Finn was nodding. “Wilhuff Tarkin was governor of Eriadu Plains. He was in charge back when the Cleave happened.”

Rey’s eyes widened. The Cleave occurred a good two decades before she was born, but even with her limited “formal” education, she’d heard of it – and she suddenly understood why she’d felt a chill the first she’d heard Orta Tarkin’s name.

A mining colony in the flat, bleak landscape called Eriadu Plains had simply split open one day, swallowing miners and equipment and sparking a global discussion on work safety. Hundreds had perished. In the wake of the disaster, Orta Tarkin’s great-grandwhoever basically said with a chilling finality: “Mistakes happen. It is time for us all to move on” without a second thought. That offhand remark had resulted in his hasty resignation and the nickname of “Butcher" Tarkin that had stuck until his death.

“Wow, you’re in some company,” said Finn. “Butcher Tarkin’s great-grandkid and Leia Organa-Solo’s ne’er-do-well son.”

Rey nearly pitched off the bed. Her heart was hammering and her throat felt dry.

“W-what? Leia _who_?”

“Incel Loverboy’s mom,” said Finn. “She was a huge deal in the legal community and a really prominent politician. Before your time. Before both our time, really.”

Rey wet her lips nervously. If Finn knew that Ben Solo was Leia Organa-Solo’s son, what _else_ did he know about him? What else did he know about what Ben Solo knew? Her head was spinning.

“If it was so long ago, how do you know anything about her?”

“Everybody who’s a legal professional in this town knows about Leia Organa,” Finn said. “When she graduated from U of Coruscant Law School, people figured she’d be swallowed up by some white-shoe firm and make the climb to partner and a seven-figure salary. Instead, she started her own law group with a focus on helping the poor access better legal services. She practiced for a while, then decided she’d be able to make more widespread change if she ran for public office. She got into the Senate her first go. Stayed there until she died. She served nearly 30 years in the Senate overall. If she’d lived longer, she probably could have been President.”

Rey nodded numbly. Her stomach was roiling and she swiped away the delivery app. Its very appearance was now making her nauseous.

“So, um, how did this come up? I mean Ben Solo’s mother?” She couldn't quite look at him. “That doesn’t seem like it would be casual conversation.”

“The state Bar Association is naming a service award after her,” said Finn. “It’ll be given to female lawyers working in public service or family law. Last night at the partner dinner, Maz was talking about who might be nominated from our firm. The name caught my attention. I thought it might coincidence, but when I asked Maz if Senator Organa-Solo had a relative called Ben, she looked at me like I’d just taken my balls out at the table.”

“Hmm. Like dessert had arrived, huh?” Rey grinned in spite of herself.

“Cute.” Finn sounded vaguely amused. “She just sort of groaned and asked me if I knew the kid. I kind of laughed at her calling him a ‘kid,’ since he’s gotta be in his 30s, right? But then again, Maz _is_ pushing 90, so that's probably how she sees him. Anyway, I told her I’d heard the name around, but I didn’t give any context.”

He fixed her with an inscrutable gaze. “You said not to say anything to anyone about that, and I didn’t.”

She dipped her head. “Thank you, Finn.”

“… Yeah. Well, anyway, she said his parents were great people and sometimes the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but in the case of Ben Solo, the apple wasn’t even in the fucking orchard. She told me his dad had been a good friend of hers. He was a fighter pilot who worked at the D’Qar Airfields as a flight instructor after he mustered out of the service. Maz said under his gruffness, Han Solo was a real sweetheart. He died a year before his wife in some weird freak accident on the job. No one really knows what happened. Ben Solo ever talk about what happened to his dad?”

“No. We don’t really talk much about … parents.”

Finn’s face softened. “Shit. Yeah, I guess not. I didn’t mean …”

“… No, no, it’s all right. I just mean we don’t get that deep, you know?” Rey nibbled her lip before voicing her next question. “It sounds like Maz knows Ben Solo pretty well. Do they, uh, keep in touch?”

“Nah. It seems like she _really_ can’t stand him. One of the other partners joked that Maz didn’t sound like she was looking forward to seeing him at the presentation dinner for the Leia Organa-Solo Service Award, but she said that since he didn’t even go to his mother’s funeral, she didn’t expect him there, either.”

Rey’s breath caught. “He didn’t go to his own mother’s _funeral_?”

“Or his dad’s, either. He’s going through the money they left him like water, though. That’s probably why he has to work at all, though his job seems cushy enough.”

Finn was frowning and rubbing at something just out of frame. Rey figured it must be one of his shoes.

“Wow.” He glanced up. “A Tarkin grandkid and the fuckface son of two pretty cool people are calling the shots at your job. Steer clear of them as much as you can.”

“You don’t have to tell me.” Her voice was grim.

But Rey wasn't thinking about that, really. She was pondering the web of lies she’d spun to Ben Solo about the relationship she had with Finn. He’d all but warned her that he could infiltrate Finn’s world any time he wanted. Now here was Finn giving corroboration. It seemed inevitable that the two men would inhabit the same sphere at some point, whether she or Maz Kanata or whoever wanted it to happen or not.

The thought flashed in Rey’s mind that she should just tell Finn about the whole boyfriend stuff. Yes, she’d come across as a hypocrite. Yes, Finn would probably be angry. But he’d understand why she’d done it and why she’d hidden it from him … maybe? Someone had once said it was better to beg for forgiveness than to ask for permission.

Yes. Coming clean to Finn was the _right_ thing to do. She didn’t like having this tissue of lies between them, at any rate. They just casual bed partners, but still. They’d agreed that absolute honesty was required in all things, and she was falling down on the job.

“Falling asleep there?” Finn’s voice startled her somewhat.

“Huh?”

“You went quiet for a minute. You okay?”

“Um.”

She took a deep breath. Held it.

“Actually Finn, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”

“Huh.” He raised an eyebrow. “Sounds important.”

“It ... it is."

His face slackened. “Uh, do I need to sit down for this talk, or should I just start sending over name suggestions?”

“Oh, for — I’m _not_ pregnant.” Despite her nervousness, she still rolled her eyes in exasperation. “You always joke about knocking me up, as if you really wouldn’t mind it!”

“What gives you that idea?” His innocent expression was infuriatingly adorable. “Although, we’d have some cute kids.”

“You sound like you’ve given this some thought.” Rey was mildly surprised that they conversation didn’t worry her like it perhaps should have done.

“I don’t have Pinterest boards or anything. It's just an educated guess. You’re a knockout and I’m not so bad … we’re both smart … we’re both survivors. Our kids would be pretty dope.” He grinned at her. “I’m just saying.”

Rey flushed at his declaration of her as a ‘knockout.’ Her eyes locked onto his smile. His gorgeous smile that highlighted his amazing eyes. Not so bad? _Finn_ was beautiful. _Beautiful_.

She took another deep breath.

“Finn, I —”

A knock cut into her words so sharply, that Rey thought that it was on her end that the noise had come. She wondered what the hell Jem the Property Manager could want _now_ , when Finn cursed sharply and looked off camera at something in the distance.

“That’s me. Could you hold on? I’ll be right back.”

He put the phone down and Rey was treated to a static image of his headboard, which had pretentious stitching vaguely in the shape of a C and a B. Just the thing if you forgot that you were in Canto Bight, she supposed.

She could hear muffled sounds, but nothing concrete. Mainly Finn’s voice. He was talking to someone, but in a register that wasn’t quite carrying over to the phone.

After about a minute, he was back.

“Sorry. I lost track of time. It feels like we’ve only been on the phone a few minutes, but it’s been almost 45! Did you know that?”

“No, not really …” Rey was surprised. It hadn’t seemed that long, but Finn was right. They had been talking for nearly an hour. It hadn’t seemed that way at all.

“Who was that? Room service?”

“No, it was Rose.”

Rey jerked backward but tried to cover the movement with a stretch.

“Rose?”

“Yeah, we’re going to the carnival together. I asked her to give me a couple seconds.”

“She’s in your hotel?”

“We’re all in the same hotel. She’s in the suite next door.”

Rey’s eyes narrowed. “… Convenient.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing.”

Rey felt a sudden headache springing behind her eyes. Finn had a few grapefruit Lacroixs and a box of saltines in his fridge. She thought that might be as much of a dinner as she’d be able to manage.

“Anyway, go on ...”

Her head snapped up. “What?”

“You said you wanted to talk to me about something. What is it?”

Rey hesitated, but shrugged.

“— I’m gonna go with Indian, I think.”

“What?”

“For dinner.” Her voice was bland. “Any suggestions?”

Finn was staring at her, his expression quietly serious.

“ _That’s_ what you wanted to tell me?”

Rey felt her resolve weakening. This was stupid. She had to _say_ something —

She heard the faint knock a moment before Finn’s eyes darted quickly to the side. Her stomach knotted and she felt suddenly and unaccountably tired.

“You’d better get that. Don’t want to keep her waiting.”

Finn’s forehead creased. “Rey —”

“Have a good time,” she said with a tight smile, a moment before she ended the connection.


	4. Doing This Tonight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello again! Some of the loose ends are starting to get tied up. Really eager to hear either now or at the end of the story how much of this you all had guessed. Thanks again for reading! (Also, I think I miscounted the chapters in my Word file, so added one. The story is still complete though :D)

Every other Wednesday, Rey’s department held a staff meeting. It was generally an hour of Ben Solo droning on about quotas, proofing mistakes, “unauthorized” bathroom breaks, and other minutiae that would have been best left to an email memo. Rey almost always took a seat on the farthest end of the table and tried not to fall asleep. Sometimes she could sneak peeks at her phone under the table, but since Solo always seemed to have his eyes on her while he rambled, it was a chancy proposition.

On this Wednesday, Solo was as boring as usual, but there was a change in that Orta Tarkin was in attendance. That resulted in a few raised eyebrows, furtive murmurs, and expressions of alarm. Solo didn’t explain the woman’s presence either, simply waiting for everyone to file in before he launched into his bi-weekly snoozefest.

Rey cast a few furtive glances at the Tarkin woman when Solo really began hitting his stride and talking about the huge expenditures in copy paper. She was listening intently, staring up at Ben Solo with glazed-apple eyes as if every word that came out of his mouth was jewel-encrusted.

It was strange, Rey thought, and even more strange that Ben Solo barely glanced at her. For that matter, Ben Solo didn’t seem to be staring _her_ down as usual either.

On any other day, that would have been a huge relief, but on this day, it seemed almost ominous. She was nearly certain that something was behind Butcher Tarkin’s great-grandwhoever and Ben Solo’s sudden chumminess. Rey was not one to gossip, nor did she have close friends at Snoke Inc. — such things didn’t really exist — but there were some murmurs about closed-door meetings in Solo’s office that stretched for more than two hours sometimes and resulted in Orta Tarkin emerging looking like the cat who ate the cream. Possibly literally.

Rey shivered violently. Great, now she was grossing _herself_ out.

When Solo changed gears to discuss when taxi vouchers could be used by staff — which seemed to boil down to “never” — Rey’s thoughts turned to Finn. He’d not called or texted her after the abrupt end of their Skype session the night before. Rey had not expected him to, nor had she really wanted to speak with him. Instead, she’d spent nearly an hour on her back in Finn’s bed staring at the ceiling, a jumble of thoughts flying through her head, making it impossible to sleep.

It was an odd thing. She’d insisted to Finn that he had no claim on her when he’d suggesting confronting Ben Solo himself. And now here she was acting every bit the jealous girlfriend. _She_ knew that she and Finn weren’t really in a relationship — well, not _that_ sort of relationship — but had playing the part for Ben Solo’s benefit done something to her judgment and sense of fair play? Because she was certainly not being fair to Finn. She was lying to _and_ about him, and now she was angry/hurt because he was spending time with a girl when he had every right to do so.

Rey was determined that when Finn returned, they would talk. She _would_ come clean to him about her lies to Solo. If Finn wanted to end things because of that, she would accept it and chalk it up to a lesson learned. She also felt that her negative feelings about his apparently close friendship with Rose Tico needed airing. They needed to be completely honest with each other, and that meant Rey had to ask him what was going on there … even if the answer might … just _might_ … break her heart in tiny pieces …

Because, well, a good sex partner was hard to find.

Yes. _That_ was it.

Rey tuned back in when the lights snapped on. Solo was clearly wrapping up his “scintillating” discussion. He opened the floor for questions, and not surprisingly, there weren’t any since most people were stifling yawns and looking longingly at the door. With a nod, Solo dismissed the group and Rey stood, stretching minutely to get the kinks out of her legs before limping out of the room with the rest of the crowd. At her desk, she took out her phone and stared at the lock screen, a rush of good memories flooding through her. She truly hoped that when she confessed, Finn would understand and forgive her. Their relationship, such as it was, was special.

Her eyes swept his smiling face and the way he’d wound his arm around her shoulders to hold her close as she took the picture.

 _Finn_ was special.

“I wish more people were like you.”

Rey’s head jerked up before she could stop herself. It had been a while since Ben Solo had snuck up on her unawares. She internally berated herself nevertheless for not continually keeping her guard up.

She did a slow three count before turning toward him, her eyebrows raised in surprise as if she were just realizing he was there, _looming_ in that edgelord way of his.

“I’m sorry? You wish more people were like me, how …?”

“You have a car,” Solo said, frowning. “You aren’t pestering me about needing taxi vouchers for working late because the buses stop running or whatever. Can’t people walk? Or bike? There are a lot of people here who could use the exercise.”

Rey tried not to grimace. “It would be a _very_ long walk to some of the suburbs, and bike lanes are pretty much nonexistent, at least in this part of town. It can be expensive to have a car in the city.”

“But _you_ have one.”

“It wasn’t really a conscious choice. I came in it across the country.” Rey’s lips flattened. “And I live in an area where I can park on the street and not have to worry about permits or monthly garage payments. I’m lucky. Some people aren’t. A _lot_ of people aren’t.”

Solo’s brow darkened, and Rey braced for something unnecessary and acerbic, but his expression abruptly smoothed out and he looked almost friendly.

“You never told me that Sv-, er, Finn, was such a good golfer.”

The sudden change of subject — and the sudden appearance of Finn in the conversation — made Rey dizzy for a moment.

“A good _what_? Did you say _golfer_?”

“Well, I’d have to see him on a regulation field, but his putting game is pretty solid.” Solo peered at her. “You look as if you don’t know what I’m talking about.”

Rey blew out a breath, having a sick feeling that she was going to regret the next few words.

“I don’t. The only time Finn’s ever mentioned golf to me was when he went to something his firm was throwing out at the Revan Links for a client.”

“Oh, right. The _Revan Invitational_. My mother did that a few times. She was a good golfer. Almost scratch, but not quite.”

His eyes turned inward for a few moments before pinning her with his gaze.

“No, I mean last night. I’d just assumed you were speaking regularly while he’s out and about at Canto Bight.”

“We are.” She forced the words through her teeth. “We talked for a long time last night, but he had to go to some charity thing. His firm rented out an amusement park for it.”

“Yes, DaalWorld. That's Canto Bight’s one big concession to the people who insist on going there for a “family vacation.” You didn’t check out KCA’s Instagram then?”

Solo looked surprised, but Rey suspected it was phony.

“I just assumed you would. Finn and Rose make a good team.”

A coldness, like an icy hand gripping her insides, made Rey almost forget how to breathe momentarily.

“Oh?” was all she could trust herself to say.

“They were doing a minigolf, knockout tournament to win money for some children’s group. They won on the final hole. The Insta story should still be up. They were cute together.” His smiled was sharp-edged. “Anyway, I’ll leave you to your work. Maybe I’ll rethink the night transportation situation. There’s a van downstairs that’s just collecting dust and a security guard who doesn’t have anything to do after 10 p.m. If people are willing to pay a monthly fee, then they can have a ride when the sun goes down.”

Rey managed to not roll her eyes. If Solo was talking about the broken-down brown van in the garage, then it figured that he’d find a way to make people pay for a solution that was only slightly better than walking an hour over highways and dirt roads in pitch darkness to their suburban homes.

When he was finally gone, her mind returned to what Solo had said about Finn and Rose being a _good team_. It was clear that he was trying to needle her about the nature of their relationship, but Rey didn’t think Solo had discovered the true nature of her relationship with Finn. He was just being an insinuating jerk.

And it was working. Kind of.

Rey stared at her phone, wondering if she should even …

Ooops, her thumb had launched the IG app.

She had an Instagram account, mainly to follow those who had sunporches and plant conservatories and greenhouses to drool over. There hadn’t been much worth putting on her page. And Finn didn’t have one of his own.

That made her wonder. A law firm with on Instagram? That was … different. Though it seemed that most of the lawyers were fairly young – the top partners weren’t. That said, Snoke Inc. had a very young and social media-savvy workforce, but barely kept its Facebook page updated.

It didn’t take her long to find the IG for Kanata, Chewbacca, and Antilles LLP. After hesitating a moment before clicking the Follow button, Rey’s eyes zoomed to the top of the app and saw that KCA had posted an IG story 12 hours earlier. Catching her lip between her teeth, she pressed her thumb to the graphic, which had the letters K, C, and A intertwined, and saw a dark video that suddenly lightened as the person taking the video seemed to realize that they needed to have a better light source. Finn was in the foreground of a stretch of a minigolf course about to tap a ball through a windmill obstacle moving counterclockwise. Standing next to him was a petite young woman with a heavy dark fringe that nearly came down to her eyelashes and curls of hair framing her face.

Rose.

Rey’s lip curled in mild dislike. The hair was longer than it was in Rose's official law firm picture, but there was no mistaking her.

Rose was standing very close to Finn. Close enough to touch him. Someone off camera stage-whispered that this next putt would be for the game, and that if Finn missed, the team from Consumer Finance would win the match, just edging out the Litigation team, led by Finn Leonis and Rose Tico. Silence fell, and Finn, his face scrunched in concentration — visible with the help of a convenient zoom in — took a moment, brought the putter back, and then swished it true, hitting the ball with a solid smack.

Rey saw Finn stare after the ball, which was now out of the shot, looking as if he were trying to guide it solely with the power of his mind. Rose had moved closer, her fists bunched at her sides, and her lips moving soundlessly as an unseen crowd around them murmured. After a second, there was the soft clunk of a ball falling into place, and Finn pumped his fist in the air just ahead of a loud cheer that drowned him out.

The video jiggled and then zoomed in on Finn and Rose at a strange, dizzying angle, but that wasn’t what caused Rey’s stomach to drop.

She watched the action unfolding in front of her dry-mouthed. Finn had dropped his putter and was swinging Rose around in delight. The two of them were laughing and hugging, oblivious to the camera and to those around them. Their faces were almost close enough for a kiss …

There was clapping and what sounded like wolf whistles coming from somewhere off camera, and that appeared to snap them out of their celebratory mood. Finn set Rose back on her feet with some alacrity, both of them looking ill at ease and almost chastened, avoiding each others’ eyes.

Rey frowned heavily when the video seemed to go wildly out of focus. She wondered if the person filming had accidentally hit some button and messed it up when she realized that it wasn’t the filmer or the app that was making it look that way. It was her. Her eyes had filled with sudden tears that caused everything in her view to go blurry.

 

* * *

 

_[ **Sent 2:37pm:** We need to talk. Call me if you can when I get off work. I’ll be at your place around 6.]_

It was quiet in Finn’s townhouse, with the stillness broken by an off-and-on clacking from the refrigerator.  He had said it was on the fritz, but it seemed to be keeping things cold well enough.

Rey paused on her way from the bedroom and instinctively checked her phone. Finn had not returned her text of that afternoon, and Rey had nearly screamed. He’d never, _ever_ left her on read before. Not once. But she calmed herself with the knowledge that it had been late morning when she’d texted him. He could be busy doing … law firm conference things. He’d talked about having to give a presentation. Had that been for today?

She glanced at the clock. Nearly ten of six. Swallowing hard, Rey continued her task. She’d almost finished packing her clothes in the little rucksack she’d brought earlier in the week, and she’d done a bit of straightening up and cleaning. Not that there was much to do, but she felt that she had to do _something_. Keep moving, keep busy.

At five minutes to six, Rey went to the bedroom and sat down on Finn’s fully made bed. Her mind was strangely blank except for the words of the script she had honed and memorized ever since seeing Finn and Rose on their firm’s Insta story. She’d done the rest of her work that afternoon by rote, after sending Finn the text, driving back to his home as if on autopilot, just turning over the words in her head that she planned to say to Finn.

Because it occurred to her, after she watched the IG story … twice … three times … _maybe_ more … what the issue was. It wasn’t Finn. It wasn’t Rose. It was _this._ It was _them._ It was the arrangement. Finn obviously felt something for Rose, but the way in which he’d pulled away from her after they’d won the minigolf tournament was telling. He didn’t feel comfortable approaching Rose romantically while he was in _this_ sort of arrangement with another woman. He probably figured it would have petered out at some point, and it hadn’t, and he was too good a guy to just end things so abruptly, especially since they’d been spending so much more time together lately. Even though their relationship was casual, perhaps Finn felt some sort of loyalty to that.

Or maybe he was simply not ready to tell his potential girlfriend that he’d been having no-strings, casual (though monogamous) sex with a random girl for the past almost six months. Finn had once said that whenever he _did_ get in a relationship, he wanted to be able to tell his partner everything.

Maybe he was just too ashamed of having turned to the HookUUp app for companionship.

Ashamed of _her_. Ashamed of what they were …

Rey understood what she had to do. If Finn wasn’t going to pull the plug, _she_ was going to have to. She didn’t think she’d be able to keep going with Finn anyway, knowing that he truly wanted to be with another woman. She had her pride. Sure, Finn was hot, and smart, and sexy, and beyond incredible in bed, and kind, and sweet, and knew what sort of plants she liked …

The phone buzzed, startling her out of her thoughts. Rey saw the **FINN** blinking up at her like a stop light. She swallowed hard, took a deep breath, and with shaking hands picked up her phone.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Finn sounded slightly out of breath. Rey didn’t even want to consider what he might have been doing.

“Sorry I didn’t get chance to text you back, I was in one seminar after another today, and then I forgot to charge my phone and it cut out on me halfway through the day. I couldn’t lay my hands on a charger for hours. It’s weird how many people don’t have Android phones here.”

“Right.” Rey picked at a loose thread on her jeans. “Did your presentation go okay?”

“Yeah, it did. Thanks for asking.” He sounded pleased. “Got a lot of good feedback. I’m glad it’s over, though, I was really flipping out about it.”

“Good.” She paused. “Great. I’m happy for you.”

“Yeah, glad to put it behind me. I’m packing, by the way. I’m just going to order some room service and zone out. Maz might not be happy I’m skipping out on the closing ceremonies, or whatever, but I’m beat. These past few days I’ve done more socializing and ass-kissing than I do in a regular year.”

“I'm sure she'll understand. It sounds like it was a long week.”

“Yeah, but she'll still give me shit for it, probably. The best I can hope for is she'll save it for when we're back in the office. She's leaving first thing tomorrow.” He laughed softly. “Oh hey, speaking of … tomorrow, I get in at about eight. You know, if everything goes okay with the flight.”

“Finn, I'm sure everything will be fine. You have a better chance of being hit by lightning 10 times in a row than being on a plane that crashes.”

“I was more thinking about the plane being _late_. But good to know I'm probably not going to go down in a fiery wreck before I finish my complimentary trail mix.” 

Rey half smiled, but noticed he did not hint at her tracking his plane like she'd done last time.

“Anyway, I’m just gonna take an Uber back to my place from the airport. I was thinking we could go out somewhere for dinner,” he said. “I know you didn’t use my Beluga account, and It’s the least I can do since I promised you free food. You want to do that Thai place around the corner you were talking about a few weeks ago?”

She squeezed her eyes shut. Her heart was knocking painfully against her ribcage and she her throat felt as if it had constricted to the size of a pin. His voice sounded so cheerful. She again flashed on the happy expression he wore when he picked up Rose and spun her around as if she were lighter than air.

“Finn …”

“… Or that Mexican place down the street from you. _If_ you don’t mind driving us down there. I know you’d have to go back to your apartment anyway, but I don’t want you to feel like a chauffeur…”

“Finn, I …”

“… _Or_ we could do pizza. I know there’s some non-fancy, non-Dominos option that we’d be able to agree on. I’ll ask for pineapple on the side.” His voice held a grin. “And you have my word that any place with sopressata on the menu is automatically out.”

“ _Finn_.” Her voice was sharp. “We need to _talk_. As in, have a _conversation_ where both of us participate?”

There was a short silence. “Oh, uh, sorry. I guess I’m just eager to get back home.”

“Really?” That gave her pause. “It's been _that_ bad?”

“It’s had its moments, but for the most part, I want to get back to work and to my own bed.”

Rey’s mouth tugged down at the corners. _Its moments … like holding Rose and nearly kissing her in front of all your coworkers_? _And your own bed so you can fuck her and not be worried about housekeeping talking behind your back when they change the sheets?_

“Plus, it feels like I haven’t seen you in ages. Even though we’ve talked, like, every day almost.” There was a warmth in his voice that made Rey’s throat tighten again. “We don’t, you know, have to _do_ anything when I get home tomorrow, but …”

“I won’t be here when you get back.”

There was another pause, longer this time. Rey could almost see Finn scrunching his nose in that cute way of his when he was trying to puzzle out something that he felt he should be instantly able to understand – like the Jumble in the _Daily Screamer_.

“What do you mean? Are you working late? That’s cool. I could Uber to your job after I drop my bags off and catch up on mail and stuff —”

“No, I mean I’m not going to be _here_. At your place.” She took another breath. “I’m leaving in a few minutes.”

“What? What do you mean you’re _leaving_? Leaving why? To go where? Rey, what’s going on?”

There was more than a note of confusion in his voice, and another quality that she couldn’t quite place. If she had to give an answer, she would have said ‘panic,’ but that made no sense.

“This is over, Finn.” She put as much steel in her voice as she could. “We’re over. I’ve … I’ve met someone and remember, we both agreed that if _either_ of us met someone we wanted to pursue a relationship with, we’d stop our arrangement. Well … I’m stopping. Because … I’ve met someone.”

She forced herself to stop talking. It was beginning to sound mechanical, even to her own ears, and if Finn questioned her too closely she wasn’t sure she’d be able to keep it up.

“You’ve … met someone.” Finn’s voice was hollow and tinged with disbelief. “Someone you want to date. _Seriously?_ ”

“Yes.” Rey focused on a point on the far wall. “Seriously.”

“Is this what you wanted to tell me yesterday? Last night? Not that you wanted Indian food, which you never ordered anyway, but _this_?”

“Yes.” She blinked slowly. “But I … I wasn’t sure then. I wasn’t sure until this afternoon.”

“What happened this afternoon?”

Rey kept her eyes on that fixed point in the distance.

_What happened? I saw you look at someone … look at her the way you’ve never looked at me …_

“I just … realized that it was right, you know? For me.”

She heard Finn exhale harshly.

“It’s not Solo, is it?”

Rey hesitated. She knew that if she said yes, Finn would hang up and never speak to her again and go forth and fulfill his destiny with Rose Tico without looking back. It would almost be easier …

But no, she couldn’t do it. Saying that she had fallen for Ben Solo would truly make her vomit, and besides, there had been enough damage done.

“No, of course not. But it _is_ someone at work. We got to know each other, and we’ve been hanging out at the office, and I just think … this might be it.”

“Really.” Finn’s voice was utterly colorless now. “I didn’t know you’d gotten that close to anyone at your job. You always said most of the people there are fuckfaces.”

“There’s an exception to every rule.”

“I guess so.” She heard him breathe out again. “So … can I ask the person’s name?”

Rey’s cheeks reddened. “Why? What difference does that make?”

“Just curiosity. I’m not going to stalk them online or shittalk them on Twitter or anything.”

Rey flushed, thinking about her earlier reconnaissance on Rose Tico and her haunting of the Kanata, Chewbacca, and Antilles social media accounts. And maybe just a _slight_ peek at Rose Tico’s LinkedIn page.

“Well, if you must know, it’s …” She gave her brain a split second to come up with a name. “Paul. His name is Paul.”

“Paul. He works in your department?”

“Not … really.” Rey licked her bottom lip nervously. “He works in … well, all over. Sometimes accounts, sometimes … other places.”

That sounded incredibly lame to her ears, but she hoped Finn would just think she was being purposefully vague.

“And how long has this been going on?”

“A few weeks. We eat lunch together. Almost every day.” Her voice sharpened a bit on the last part. “We’ve gone out a few times. In fact, the last time you had to go out of town, we went to the invasive plant species exhibit at the Botanical Gardens and then saw _Ragnarok_.”

“I was wondering why you started stanning Jeff Goldblum all of a sudden.”

“Yeah, well I wasn’t born when he was young-hot. But he’s old guy-hot and it’s fun to just look.” Rey paused. “Anyway, I kept Paul at arm’s length, because, _you know_. But not anymore. Today … I just knew that things between you and me had to change.”

There was another of those short silences.

“Because of Paul.”

“Yes.” Rey’s voice dipped low. “Because of Paul.”

Neither of them said anything for a long time. Rey could hear Finn breathing and almost wished they’d Skyped for this conversation. But then again, maybe seeing his expression would not have been optimal. For all she knew, he was grinning ear to ear and dancing a little to celebrate being “free.”

“I still don’t understand why this means you have to leave tonight,” Finn finally said in the same toneless voice. “I get that this … is over, but why leave tonight?”

“Because Paul knows I’m housesitting for a _friend_. He wanted to come over. It wouldn’t make sense for me to say no, if I’m housesitting for just a _friend_. And I didn’t think it would be cool to have him in here …”

“Yeah, no. It wouldn’t. Thanks for that.”

She shivered at the ice in his voice. He seemed angry now, which surprised her a little. Maybe he’d wanted to be the one to break things off? But then, he’d had plenty of time to do that. He could’ve done it last night, this morning, any time after the minigolf tournament, really.

“Yeah. So … should I call that guy Jem? Your property manager? I think his office light was on when I came in. I mean, he probably can’t spend the night, but I can drop your key off with him, if you want.”

“No, that’s all right. I’ll call my friend Poe and ask if he can come over. I think he’s in town. I’ve mentioned you to him before, right?”

Rey dimly remembered Finn talking about a friend of his who was in the military or a pilot, or maybe both? She couldn’t quite remember. Finn had been undressing at the time and her focus had been elsewhere.

“Just leave the key under the welcome mat. If Poe’s not around, I’ll call Jem myself to pick it up.”

“Okay. No problem.”

Rey stood. It seemed to be the point in the conversation for her to do so.

“So … I guess this is it.”

“Yeah.” His voice had lost some of the frostiness, but not all. “I guess it is.”

“I … had fun. It was fun while it lasted.” Rey swallowed hard. “Good luck with everything. Not that you’ll need it. You’re already on your way to being a great lawyer. And having a great life. I’m sorry if you feel like I wasted your time.”

There was another long silence, so much so that Rey thought that Finn might actually have hung up the phone.

Then his voice came over the line, soft and without coldness. As gentle as his hand in her hair on the nights they snuggled after sex.

“Rey, you never wasted my time. Take care of yourself. Please.”

She felt a sudden lump in her throat and a stinging in her eyes. It was some seconds before she could say a word.

“You, too. Goodbye, Finn.”

Rey ended the call quickly and shoved her phone into her back pocket.

It was a half-hour before she satisfied herself that she’d returned Finn’s home more or less to the condition in which she’d found it, and it took another five minutes to do one last tour of the place, committing it to memory. Even though she was reasonably sure she wasn’t being watched, Rey looked around anyway before sliding the key and fob to Finn’s home under a brown welcome mat shaped vaguely like a boat.

She stared down at the mat’s cheery “WELCOME” in lettering of a somewhat muted gold. She turned away abruptly when she felt the stinging in her eyes again.

Rey drove home without incident, parking in the same grease-marked space that she always did and trudging up to her cheerless, dark, hole in the wall. It was only after she’d hung up all her clothes that she realized she’d left the moth orchid that Finn had gotten her as a housesitting present back at his place. She’d put it on the windowsill in a room he used as an office, as that room seemed to get less sun, since direct sunlight could burn its leaves. She’d meant to grab it on the way out the door — it seemed appropriate to serve as a memento of her time with Finn — and had just been in such a hurry to leave that she'd forgotten about it.

Something within her gave way then, and Rey fell onto her bed, sobbing her heart out in a way she hadn’t done since she’d been a child back in Jakku Gulch.


	5. The Game is Over

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You have now reached the chapter that I had an absolute blast writing. Hope you all enjoy it, too!

From the time she was about 6 years old, Rey had scratched tick marks on the wall of her hovel in the Gulch at the end of each day to represent how long she’d been alone. It wasn’t until the day she reckoned was her 19th birthday that she’d finally given up hope that her family would ever come back for her. From then on, she considered the scratches to be the measure of time that she’d been imprisoned in that hellish landscape and it was then that she put plans to escape in motion.

It was that experience and the meaning behind it that drove Rey to begin making tick marks on her blotter at work not long after she'd begun there — keeping track of how long she was in almost indentured servitude to Snoke Inc. But just as her perspective changed in the Gulch on her 19th birthday, her worldview shifted after things ended with Finn. The day after she'd made that phone call, Rey had scrutinized the ink slashes on her blotter and decided to not see them as a record of despair and futility but as a line in the sand that signaled she had had **enough**.

She spent her off hours at the library five blocks from her home availing herself of free internet and redoing her resume. It was paltry, but she’d read enough online about how to pad out a resume so that it looked as if she’d had more experience than she did. She applied to jobs, even the long shots, because why the hell not? She kept her eyes open for opportunities not advertised online, put in applications in stores downtown and along the Lake District. Rey dedicated herself almost entirely to getting out of the morass of Snoke Incorporated. At night, she watched old 90s sitcoms on Hulu and contemplated the rest of her life.

She was 22 years old. She’d escaped a horrible childhood and upbringing. She was a survivor.

Her expression soured. A survivor. Finn had called her that. Said they both were survivors … and that their children would be —

Rey didn’t beat herself up whenever she found herself thinking about Finn. All communication had stopped after that fateful phone call: No texts, no snaps, no Skype, no calls. It was if he’d completely vanished from her life. And, really, Rey supposed he had. With every resume she sent and application she filled out, she recalled Finn's insistence that she was better than Snoke Inc. and could find something worthy of her skills and talents. He’d always encouraged and believed in her. He was a good man. She would not have done what she had if she had not believed that Finn was a good man who deserved good things.

Rey also knew that occasionally, she’d think about him. Not just when she was alone in bed, horny as all hell and trying to stifle his name on her lips as she used her fingers to bring herself off — or when she saw the cheesy ads on the light rail featuring grinning lawyers who promised they wouldn’t get paid unless you did — but at other times. The minutes she sat in traffic on the way to and from work. At the grocery store. At the laundromat, where she'd resumed her uneven — but interesting — conversations with the taciturn change guy.

Finn was never far from her thoughts, but Rey was proud of herself. No matter how much she might think about him or dream about him or fantasize about him or _miss_ him, she stuck to the path she’d chosen. The fact that Finn himself hadn’t reached out seemed to indicate that she’d chosen correctly. Maybe one day, when everything else in her life was good and she felt safe and content, she could try to find what Finn had apparently found with Rose Tico. Caring about someone — being with that person and _only_ that person — sounded nice. Rey was sure that she wanted that for herself some day, with someone like Finn. Obviously it couldn’t _be_ him, because … yeah … but maybe someone like him? Someone with his drive, his intelligence, his kindness, his nerve, his ass …

It was in the fourth week that things started to stumble a bit. She’d had a few nibbles from her job search, but nothing that had yet born fruit. And with the worst possible timing ever, the old car she’d _liberated_ from her guardian’s crush shop in the Gulch had finally given out. She knew what the issue was, and if she’d had time, a ton of money, and a hydraulic lift, she could have taken care of it herself. However, she had none of those things, and so her old reliable car sat in a parking space and she had to get reacquainted with the bus, the light rail and setting her alarm an hour earlier so that she could still get to work on time.

In the fifth week, her sleep schedule adjusted and she became used to being car-less despite the weather beginning to turn brisk and then downright cold. It was on a day during that fifth week that Rey walked into work and was confronted with a buzz that stretched around the cubicles on her floor. People were chattering excitedly to their neighbors while looking furtively around, as if concerned that a supervisor would come onto the floor and put an end to the fun … whatever that was.

Rey slung her coat over her chair and then popped her head above the partition that divided her from her neighbor, a sullen young man with fiery hair and a love of eating sardines for lunch. Unfortunately.

“Hey, Barry, what’s everyone so hopped up about?”

He glanced up at her and shrugged. “People’re saying Solo’s proposed to that Tarkin chick. There’s probably going to be an announcement and they’re giving everybody the day off in celebration or some shit.”

Rey blinked in shock. “Proposed?”

“That’s what they say. Two assholes who deserve each other —”

But Barry closed his mouth suddenly, as if it occurred to him that he might be overheard by the wrong people. He went back to intently studying his screen, ignoring Rey’s presence. She waited a few seconds to see if there would be any more intel, and then turned away, slowly sinking into her chair.

It had not gone unnoticed — or unappreciated — by Rey that Ben Solo had ceased the random visits to her cubicle. When he did stop by, it was to drop off work with very little conversation. No snide remarks about Finn or _friendship_ with Rose Tico, either. Rey didn’t think Solo knew what had happened. She figured he definitely would have needled her if he’d known she and Finn were no longer … involved. But this news about his relationship with Orta Tarkin shed a new light on things. Rey had noticed the two executives leaving for lunch together and walking to their high-level meetings on the fifth floor together, but she’d not considered that they had reached the point of _marriage_.

That day began a spiral of depression that caught Rey within its vortex. She went through the motions at work, stopped her assiduous search for another job, ignored her broken-down car, and went home to curl into the fetal position on her bed and stare at the walls. Rey couldn’t quite understand her feelings — but in another way, she could. She was not jealous _per se_ of Ben Solo or Orta Tarkin. She generally agreed with Barry that they were two unpleasant people who were doing the universe a favor taking each other out of circulation. But it occurred to Rey that Solo had started pursuing Orta Tarkin after she’d insisted that she had a boyfriend. And now Solo was getting married while _she_ was alone and Finnless.

 _Friend_ less.

The sixth week AtPC — _After the Phone Conversation_ — Rey dragged herself into work on a day that was cold, windy and spitting rain. Her mood mirrored the weather. Her ceiling was leaking, the bathroom pipes were in a bad way, and her hot water heater had stopped working. Talking to the lumpen landlord whose basement apartment looked and smelled like a fetid junkyard was an exercise in futility, especially since she was _slightly_ late on that month’s rent. He’d waved her off with vague promises to fix things and not-so-vague warnings that if she didn’t get caught up on what she owed him, other things in the apartment might stop working.

To add insult to injury, she’d started getting “Thanks but no thanks” form letter responses to jobs she’d applied to weeks earlier. She’d expected that, but it was still something of a blow to have it happen now, on top of everything else.

And she’d nearly — _nearly_ — broken down and texted Finn a few nights earlier. Rey was intensely curious as to what had become of the moth orchid and thought that might be an “in” to a larger conversation. But she’d restrained herself. For all she knew, Finn had given it to Rose. Maybe she liked plants. She was named for one, so why not?

Rey knew she didn’t want to be _that girl_. The one who hung around not able to read the signs or take the hint. She’d taken control by ending it; she didn’t want to put Finn in the position of being annoyed, or worse, feeling sorry for her.

So instead of calling him, she’d fired up the HookUUp app, which she hadn’t done since meeting Finn. They’d both retired their profiles when they’d decided to make their arrangement a regular thing, but women could browse for three days without fully reactivating their accounts. Rey halfheartedly looked through a collection of tortured hipsters, “nice guys,” and randoms looking for a third to spice up their relationships.

It made her realize how she’d lucked out in finding Finn on an app where so many of the people looking for “ongoing casual arrangements” were either outside of what she was looking for age-wise or location-wise, or just assholes. She remembered Finn telling her that when he’d heard about the app, he’d test driven it a few times but didn’t feel moved to actually meet anyone until she’d popped up on his radar. She’d felt flattered about that at the time, but if Finn had been fishing from this same stagnant pool, then it really wasn’t anything to write home about.

That day, Rey was drinking her second cup of coffee and counting down the minutes until she could microwave her Hot Pocket and eat it in relative quiet at her desk when her terminal beeped with a message. Her surprise turned to a small grimace when she saw that it was from “The Desk of Ben Solo” with a curt message to “See him in his office in about 5 minutes.”

Earlier in her tenure at Snoke Inc., Solo would call her into his office for “private chats” ostensibly about work that often turned into one-sided conversations filled with innuendo and suspicious hand gestures. That hadn’t happened since Rey had countered with her “boyfriend” gambit, however, and she didn’t think Solo was resurrecting the practice. She was fairly sure she knew what it was about; she’d muffed the proofing on a few ads the week before that necessitated a new print run, costing more time and money. And a few days earlier, she’d sent the wrong report to a Snoke Inc. exec, who had chewed her out over email while cc’ing Solo.

Rey sighed softly. Her mind hadn’t really been on work ever since things had ended with Finn, and her productivity had taken a spectacular nosedive in recent weeks. Maybe Solo was going to can her. It was scary as hell on one hand because she had about 30 cents in her bank account – but on the other hand, flying without a net might give her the kick in the arse she needed to really bear down and find work she could actually enjoy doing. Or at least didn’t dread having to deal with every day.

But as she rode the elevator up to Solo’s fifth-floor office, Rey knew that she could not afford to lose this job — not without a backup plan. She cheered herself with the thought that it probably wouldn’t be that bad. Very few Marketing Assistants at Snoke Inc. were ever actually outright fired. One of her colleagues had completely fucked up proofing an important PowerPoint and had simply been punished with a three-day unpaid suspension. It was more likely that Solo wanted to rub her nose in her mistakes but would let her off with one of his insincerely benevolent warnings. He might even hint at his coming nuptials and ask how things were going with her “boyfriend.”

Rey gulped at that last thought. She really and truly hoped that Solo would _not_ mention Finn. Rey wasn’t sure how or if she could keep it together if he made some wisecrack about how well Finn and his _good pal Rose_ were getting on.

The fifth floor was the only fully carpeted floor in the entire building, and always appeared to be in shadow. The light that should have come in through the huge picture windows opposite the offices seemed to get swallowed up by the dim hallways. The main corridor smelled faintly of furniture polish and burning firewood, which was an oddity since there was no fireplace on that or any other floor. Rey shuddered at the almost unnaturally springy carpet beneath her feet and glanced around in quiet dismay. Thinking back on it, she never actually _saw_ anyone on the fifth floor. The offices were filled with executives, but each time she’d been up there, the entire floor was as quiet as a tomb.

Solo’s office was at the very end of the hallway — a corner office, naturally — and the door was slightly ajar. Rey couldn’t hear anything going on within: no talking, no typing, no writing. It was eerie as hell, like stepping into a void. Despite being expected and the door being a smidge open, she knocked anyway.

There was a grunt from behind the door that she took to be an invitation to enter, and she pushed the door open fully. Solo was at his desk, his dark head bent over his laptop. Rey looked at him expectantly, waiting for him to acknowledge her.

And kept waiting. And _kept_ waiting.

Several long seconds ticked by with Rey standing awkwardly in the middle of the floor and Solo engrossed in whatever it was he was reading, as if he’d forgotten she was there. Rey twisted her hands, wondering if she should clear her throat or something when he looked up finally, his dark eyebrows drawn sharply together like two combatants touching swords.

He waved vaguely toward an armchair opposite his desk.

“Sit down, Rey.”

Rey did so with no small amount of alarm. She could read nothing in Solo’s face, which to her seemed a very bad sign.

He watched her settle into the seat with the same blank expression, and it was only through great strength of will that Rey was able to keep herself from squirming.

Finally, he closed his laptop and stared intently at her, resting his long chin on steepled fingers.

“Do you know why I’ve asked you here?”

Rey swallowed. “I … I’m not sure …”

He stared for a few moments more, then straightened in his chair.

“I’ve gotten some complaints about your work lately. Not just a few mistakes — a sort of carelessness that I wouldn’t have expected from you.”

Rey’s shoulders slumped. In a way, she’d hoped that she was wrong about her summons, but in another sense, it was good that it was out in the open.

“I know,” she said, looking down at her hands. “I’m sorry. I’ve been …”

She paused, not sure what to say. She’d been _what_? Sad because her friend-with-benefits had fallen for someone? Sure, _that_ would go over well.

Solo waved his hand, as if prompting her to get on with it. “You’ve been …?”

“I’ve been … distracted.” She lifted her chin and faced him squarely. “I’m disappointed in myself. It means a lot to me to do a good job. These mistakes won’t happen again, you have my word.”

He shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s gone a little beyond just an apology.”

The blood left her face. What the hell could that mean? Was he about to turf her? Over a few missed edits? _Really_?

“You sent one of the partners the wrong material for an important client,” he said. “He complained to Chairman Snoke, who was _not_ pleased. At all. He suggested to me that someone who would make such a stupid mistake has no place at Snoke Inc. I agreed with him ...”

Rey felt herself start to tremble. He _was_. Solo was going to fire her. With rent due in a week and a half and no car, and no one sending her anything about another job except rejections, her only safety net was being ripped from her.

“Mr. Solo, if I could just explain —”

“… Let me finish.” His chin went to his fingers again. “I agreed with him … in principle. But, I persuaded the Chairman not to be so hasty in your case. Your work has been consistently good, and I assured him that these sort of errors will _never_ happen again.”

Rey nearly wilted in relief.

“Thank you, Mr. Solo. I promise I’ll be much more careful in the future.”

She cringed inwardly at the groveling note in her voice, but she thought about her near empty refrigerator and her complete lack of immediate options and decided she’d be ashamed of herself later.

“Yes, well, I don’t want to lose a good employee over a few unfortunate errors. That said, I think maybe you need some time off.” Solo looked at a printout on his desk. “This is an audit of the vacation time you’ve taken this year – which, so far, has been none. I suggest you take your five half-days. Starting now. Come back next Monday refreshed and ready to work. Chairman Snoke’s annoyance should have completely blown over by then, and we can all start with a clean slate.”

Rey stifled a groan. Snoke Inc.’s vacation policy was limited to five days — but only with half-pay. If a worker took off any more time, even for illness, it was completely unpaid. She really couldn’t afford to take a week off at half her salary, but she could tell by Solo’s voice that it wasn’t actually a _suggestion._

“Yes, Mr. Solo,” she murmured, calculating how much ramen she’d need to survive until payday, when most of her check would go toward rent, including what she owed. “I understand. Thank you again.”

“Mmhm.” Ben leaned back in his chair. “Get some rest. Recharge. Maybe you and _Finn_ could take a day trip to the Utupau Orchards.”

Rey’s breath hitched painfully. “Excuse me?”

“You haven’t been to Utupau? Cute place. My mother took me there a few times when I was a child.” His eyes were somewhat veiled. “I think KCA represents them, so your fellow might get a discount. You have one more week left for apple-picking. The fresh air might do you good.”

Rey breathed in sharply. Maybe she didn’t deserve to get out of this as easily as it seemed she was going to, but she was so _tired_. It was almost a relief to be able to climb out from under of the huge weight of the lie, even though she felt anything but happy about it. But it had served its purpose – Solo had left her alone and now was getting married to someone else. Finn was no longer in her life, and it was time to release him from the mess she’d made for herself.

“I don’t think so,” she said in what she hoped was a light, unbothered tone. “Finn and I aren’t seeing each other anymore.”

Solo’s eyebrows jumped. “You’re not?”

Rey did a double-take. Solo’s eyes were … _strange_ , suddenly. They seemed to have an odd, almost yellow cast to them. It had to be some trick of the light.

“We’ve broken up,” she said, pushing away the bizarre image of Solo’s eyes. “And anyway, I’m allergic to apples.”

“When was this?” Solo’s voice was unaccountably sharp. “When did _this_ happen?”

“A while ago,” she muttered. “Almost two months. Maybe a little less.”

“Almost two _months_?” His brow knit in concentration. “You broke up after his Canto Bight trip, then.”

Her face reddened. She’d been spending the past six weeks trying to forget about that damned trip.

“Yes. I guess it was about that time.” Rey paused. “We just … it wasn’t anything bad. He didn’t _do_ anything there. Finn has a busy schedule. So do I. We’re both young and have other things on our plates. We decided to stay friends.”

She stumbled a little over that last bit and her blush deepened. Solo was still simply staring at her, not unlike times in the past, such as the weekly meetings, but something was different. Something in the air had changed. It worried her.

He was about to speak when the door flew open. Orta Tarkin walked in as peremptorily as if it were her office, looking into a compact and touching up her lips with a lipstick in a violent pink shade.

“Ben are you ready? The reservations are in 15 minutes, so we have to hurry ...”

The woman lowered the compact and jumped a little at the sight of Rey.

“Oh!”

Her dark eyes pinballed from Rey to Solo for a few seconds before settling on Solo.

“Your door was cracked. I didn’t realize you were in the middle of a … conference.”

Rey glanced at Solo, who was rising from his chair. For just a fleeting second, Rey again caught the yellowish light in his eyes, and his expression seemed thunderous, almost dangerous. But in another moment, his broad, bland face was smiling at Orta Tarkin, and he had a hand on her arm.

“Sorry, ‘Ta. I meant to call you. I’m not going to be able to make it today. After I’m done with Miss Walker, the Chairman has some numbers he wants me to run for him.”

Orta Tarkin turned her head and stared down at Rey. Rey met her eyes, but almost wished she hadn’t. Tarkin was looking at her like a child who’d been told that she couldn’t crush a housefly buzzing around — that the housefly was, instead, going to be caught and freed outside. It occurred to Rey then that the Angel of Death would likely have been the one to give her a pink slip. Maybe she’d even been looking forward to it — and now she’d be thwarted.

The thought made Rey smile. Poor baby.

Tarkin glowered suspiciously at her, but had only a few moments to do so: Ben Solo was gently guiding her toward the door with words spoken in a soothing, low tone that Rey couldn’t catch. Orta Tarkin made some noises of agreement, and seemed to be gearing up to say more, when the door closed on her, mid-sentence, followed by a strange clicking sound.

Rey’s mouth twitched. Strange way to treat one’s fiancée. Maybe Orta Tarkin wasn’t an orchard fan and had refused an invitation to go apple-picking?

And then her mouth went a bit dry as it suddenly came to her what the strange clicking sound had been.

Solo had not only closed his office door, he’d _locked_ it as well.

“Sorry about that.” His voice made her jump. “I should have had you close the door when you first came in.”

Rey eyed Solo warily as he took his seat again. His face was still closed but his eyes were shining. She saw them drop briefly, as if he were taking the measure of her body, before coming back up – and taking their time doing so – to fix on her face.

It made her feel unclean – and somewhat unnerved. In all the times she’d been in Solo’s office, he’d never locked the door before. Did he think Orta Tarkin was going to barge in again? Their conversation was over, wasn’t it?

“Thank you again for speaking up for me to the Chairman.” Rey smiled skittishly. “I suppose I’ll see you next Monday —”

“— This breakup with Finn … it began _before_ your issues with your work,” he said, giving no indication that he’d heard what she’d said. “If it was nearly two months ago, then that doesn’t seem like that would have been the cause.”

“That’s because it isn’t — wasn’t.” Rey’s teeth were tightly clenched. _Were_ they done or not? “I’m having some issues with my landlord and my car’s broken down. I’ve had to adjust to taking public transportation. It’s been a bit of a rough go for me, but I’ll put it behind me —”

“What happened with your Finn?” Solo looked up. “Decided he needed to lean hard on those billables? Too much time needed to handle his _matters_ and no time left for you? I tried to warn you. Lawyers are all the same.”

Rey grimaced. Again, it almost seemed that Solo wasn’t talking to her or about Finn. That didn’t make her feel any better.

“Maybe.” She wondered if she just agreed with him – sort of – this could be over and she could begin her half-paid exile in her dark, damp, leaking apartment.

“Anyway, thank you again, Mr. Solo, for being so … understanding.” The word almost stuck in her throat, but she was able to get it out with a smile and only a slight wince. She made to rise.

“One moment, Rey.”

His voice was quiet — not necessarily low in pitch, but quiet in tone. It was unnerving. Rey found that she felt on much steadier ground when he was growling out some order or even using that sneering manner he liked to adopt at times. This quiet, almost gentle voice didn’t go with his empty face and gleaming eyes.

Slowly, she sat down again.

“Yes?”

“You’ve told me before that even though your accent is of the Coruscanti Isles, you weren’t raised there.” Solo raised one brow. “Is that true?”

“Yes,” she said slowly, not sure where this was going. “That’s right. I came to Jakku Gulch when I was five. My, uh, guardian grew up in the Isles, I think. I just sort of picked up his accent.”

“Must have been odd, a Coruscant Islander in a place like Jakku Gulch.”

Rey resisted the pull of the memory that would take her back to that sweltering hellscape, the despair, the endless mounds of junk and refuse.

“A _lot_ of things were _odd_ there.”

“I can imagine. At any rate, did you learn about Coruscanti royalty in school?”

She glared at him. “I was homeschooled.”

Rey knew they’d gone over this before, during her interview. Calling it homeschooling was more than a bit of stretch. Plutt’s lazy ass had thrown some textbooks in her direction and expected her to fend for herself, but she’d been able to teach herself to read and write, and maybe a little bit more than basic math. Enough to get by.

“Yes, well wasn’t there a history curriculum? Wouldn’t you have needed that for your diploma?”

“Er … yes, but it wasn’t all that substantial.”

Rey hoped he didn’t ask to see said diploma, which she didn’t have, because it didn’t exist. It was one of the reasons she hadn’t been as assiduous in her job search. Solo had seemed taken aback during her interview when she’d mentioned being homeschooled, but had let it drop and offered her the job without asking to see credentials. She’d been mildly suspicious, but relieved at that.

But he was being so fucking _weird_ now.

“A shame, because royalty is interesting. It interests me.” Solo smiled thinly. “ _I’m_ royalty. Did you know that?”

“Uh … no?” Rey wasn’t sure quite what to say. “That’s, um, really …”

“I don’t have a kingdom. Monarchies have been abolished, for the most part.” He sounded bitter. “But my grandmother was a queen. A queen of the Naboo Protectorate.”

Rey was impatient with herself for being mildly intrigued. The Naboo Protectorate was a grouping of beautiful islands halfway across the world. She vaguely recalled reading in one of the outdated textbooks Plutt had shoved at her that the Protectorate had always been ruled by a Queen and her advisors, but that had ended after a civil war 50 or 60 years ago.

“My mother was a princess,” he went on, conversationally. “Not even ‘technically.’ Under the treaty that ended the war, my grandmother’s children were allowed to keep and use their titles. Instead,” His face twisted, “My mother became a _lawyer_. And a _politician_.”

Rey shrugged slightly. “Well, with the monarchy no longer existing, maybe she figured she could help more people as a Senator.”

Solo looked surprised, but recovered quickly, chuckling.

“One of the strange quirks of royalty is wanting to … keep things all in the family, so to speak. Royals marry other royals. Mostly.”

Rey squirmed. “… Okay.”

“ _Mostly_ ,” he repeated, his face darkening. “My grandmother didn’t. And my mother _definitely_ didn’t. You could argue that they both made mistakes in their marriages.”

Rey wanted to mention that if his mother had not married his father, _he_ wouldn’t exist, but decided that maybe that wouldn’t be the best move.

“Yes … they _both_ made mistakes. My grandfather could have been a great man. My father … well, the less said about him the better.” He waved a dismissive hand, but his voice changed in the next minute.

“Do you know anything about the Tarkin family?”

Rey was slightly thrown by the change in topic.

“You mean Ms. Tarkin’s family? Like her parents?”

“Not just her parents. Anything about her ancestry, her forebears …”

Rey wasn’t sure how Solo would react if she mentioned that she knew Orta Tarkin’s great-whoever had been in charge of the Eriadu Plains during one of its greatest tragedies — and had done almost nothing about it and hadn’t seemed to give a fuck about people’s suffering. She wasn’t sure why it would matter, or why he was even asking.

“Not really,” she said after another moment of hesitation. “I think I heard her mention once that she had a relative that was a governor of something.”

Solo laughed softly. “Of _something_. Well, you’re not really missing anything not knowing much about _him_. But the Tarkins are royalty of a sort, too. Rich. New money. But cash is king.” His voice had a musing quality to it.

“As I said, royalty is often pushed to marry royalty. Chairman Snoke has been more of a father to me than my own father was. He thinks a lot of dear old ‘Ta. He’s always said that a Solo-Tarkin alliance would be unstoppable. He’s happy that Orta and I have become so … close. News that we intend to be married has pleased him very much.”

Rey stared at him. Was that it? He was keeping her there to brag about his upcoming wedding? As if she gave a shit?

Well, he _had_ kept her from getting canned, so she supposed she had to pretend a polite interest.

“Oh. Well, congratulations. I’m sure that you’ll be —”

“— But the Chairman, as intelligent as he is, doesn’t understand royalty,” Solo went on. “Not really. When royals marry among only themselves, the result is often unsatisfying, ugly, inbred offspring.”

Solo’s mouth quirked into a grin. “You’ve probably come across that in your history books?”

“Um, maybe?” Rey’s brow furrowed. “But wasn’t that because they were all related? You and Ms. Tarkin aren’t relatives, right?”

“God no.” He laughed shortly. “But it’s along the same lines. Royals make alliances among other royal houses. It’s strategic, but it results in the same ideas being recycled. My grandmother and mother tried to break free of that. It wasn’t a bad idea, in theory. They just chose wrong. I will not.”

He brought his eyes to her face. And smiled a smile that made her flesh crawl.

“Orta Tarkin would be a _strategic_ partner. But I don’t want strategic. I don’t want safe. I want fresh blood.”

His tongue darted out to wet his lips. “You, for instance, Rey.”

Her eyes went huge.

“… Me? What are you —”

“You’re utterly unsophisticated. You’re not royalty.” His voice took on that creepy softness again. “I could mold you. I could make you into a queen.”

Rey couldn’t speak for a second. Solo’s words were still being processed in the jumbled filters of her brain. Was he _proposing_ to her? They hadn’t even so much as had a sandwich together and he was, what, asking her to _marry_ him? Was he absolutely insane? He’d never baldly approached her before, it had always been insinuation and double entendres. But there was no mistaking what _this_ was.

“Mr. Solo.” Her voice was firm. “This is … this is _highly_ inappropriate.”

Solo looked puzzled. “I don’t understand. You’re not dating someone else already, are you?”

Rey couldn’t force herself to lie again. There were alarm bells going off in her head that made her think that lying might make things worse.

“No. Not that it’s any of _your_ business.”

Rey stood up. Enough of this weirdness. If Solo didn’t want to marry Orta Tarkin, that was his business, but she was done with this.

“I’m _not_ interested. I have absolutely no desire to be … your _queen_. I appreciate what you’ve done for me with the Chairman, so I’d like to suggest we pretend this conversation never happened. But I’m warning you, if you speak like this to me again, I’ll –”

He stood too, and Rey reeled back. The sickly yellow tint in his eyes wasn’t a trick of the light or shadow. It was _him_. Somehow, it was _him._

He was grinning again but there was no humor whatever in his face.

“You’ll what? Sweetheart, you’re a barely educated orphan from a backward desert town. No influence, no credentials. No parents. No friends.” He laughed again. “You’re a nobody, Rey.”

The grain of truth in his words stung, and only the desire not to let Solo see her cry kept the tears from escaping.

Solo stared down at her, his expression cold. “Yes. You’re a nobody — but not to me. I could raise your profile. You’re not going to get a better offer. Comfort and luxury and a _pedigree_. A _name_. Do you think I’m completely stupid? I know _Walker_ isn’t your actual last name. You picked it up from somewhere along the way, I suppose. I also know that you weren’t fucking _homeschooled_. Is this how you want to go through life, Rey? As a barely educated nothing working menial jobs? You’re beautiful and young, but beauty fades and youth disappears. I’m offering you a life.”

He held out his hand. “A chance.”

Rey had to swallow down a wave of nausea. She almost wished she could be gross enough to vomit on Solo’s immaculate pile carpeting, but she thought about her bank balance and knew she had to get out of there before she said or did something she would regret.

“I said _no_.”

Rey’s voice was almost unnaturally calm, her gaze clear and steady. Her heart lifted when she saw Solo’s confident smile wilt and his hand drop.

“I’m not interested in _anything_ you have to offer. Not now, not ever. I may be a _nobody_ , but I’m still _me_.” She smiled slightly, thinking of Finn, before adding, “I’m a survivor.”

Rey turned and stalked away, proud of herself for the speech, but her mind whirling. Had that _really_ just happened? Was Solo —

“And now what?” His mocking voice pursued her across the room. “Do you think you can go running back to Finn? Fat chance of that.”

Rey hesitated at the door.

“I’ve told you, Mr. Solo, I don’t want to talk about that. Whatever Finn and I were is none of your business!”

Solo laughed. “You know, I’ve done some digging into his background. I wanted to see what an up-and-coming lawyer would see in a nothing like you. He’s a handsome fellow. He could have his pick of women. Yes, you’re very pretty, but he could have that easily in any number of women — women with advanced degrees and cushy jobs like his. Women on his level of intelligence. Why _you_?”

Rey swallowed down a sob. _Just leave. Just open the door and leave. Don’t listen to him anymore._

She stretched out her hand toward the doorknob, turned it, and stared dumbfounded as the knob didn’t give way.

Rey tried it again, jiggling it, pulling it. Nothing.

Somehow, she couldn’t open the door. She rattled the handle with much more force, not feeling the least bit of give.

She blanched as the truth became clear, and a hot stab of fear lanced through her.

He’d locked her in with him. Somehow, he’d made it so that she could not get out of there.

“Mr. Solo, I want to leave.” She fought for calm. “Unlock this door. _Now_.”

“We’re not finished. We were talking about your _Finn.”_

Rey turned and had to stifle a gasp at his sudden nearness. She hadn’t heard him approach, and he was now less than two feet away from her and still closing in.  She backed up against the closed door, eyes wide as he advanced on her with that same horrid grin and those glowing eyes. He stopped just a foot or so away, looking at her with an expression that was much like a slobbering dog than anything else.

“The more I found out about him, the more I understood why he bothered with you. He’s a nobody, too. He has smarts, I suppose, but he lucked out. He toyed with you. Did you understand that at the end, Rey? Is that why you broke it off with him? Or was _he_ the one who dumped _you_?

“That’s it, isn’t it? He dumped you — for Rose Tico.” He chortled deep in his throat. “I knew he’d go for her. He was never going to be serious about a person like you. You see, a royal can raise a nobody, but nobodies always want to climb up. You were convenient, easy pussy for him, and now that he’s had you, he’s discarded you to make the climb. Both of Rose Tico’s parents are successful, influential, _rich_ doctors. Not a bad family to marry into for a ward of the court whose drug-addicted parents cared more about their next fix than him.”

Rey’s whole body shook with anger. She knew that Solo had her cornered, and without a way out of his office, things could go very bad, very quickly. But his dismissive discussion of Finn’s horrid childhood made her momentarily forget her fear.

“Shut up,” she said in a voice that vibrated with rage. “You don’t know _anything_ about him.”

“Oh, I know enough.” Solo tapped his chin. “I know that his druggie parents started a fire in their tenement while getting high, and everybody in the building died except Finn and some old drunk who was having a piss outside when the building went up in smoke. Oh you didn’t know that? Left that tidbit about his life out, did he? Can’t say I blame him. But surely he told you about his high school days? Excellent student, top of his class, scholarship offers starting in 10th grade. But with all that _promise_ he joins a gang? Of course he does. That’s what people like _him_ do.”

Her eyes turned dark. “What do you mean _people like him_?”

Solo just grinned in response. It made her want to scrub her skin off.

“Sort of a shame, but not a surprise. People like _him_ are born with no chance. Sort of like an insect struggling in a toilet. You sort of root for them for awhile, knowing it’s pointless.”

His grin suddenly oozed venom. “And then you flush.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Her voice rose. “Insect? _You_ couldn’t polish Finn’s shoes!”

Solo smirked. “Friend of his got his head blown off right in front of him, yeah? Finn must have shit his pants seeing that, poor guy. Probably had his friend’s blood and bits of brain all over him. If that bullet had been just a millimeter to the right …”

“Stop it! Let me out of here!” Rey grasped the knob, yanking with all her might. “Let me _go_!”

“But the news wasn’t all bad. That little adventure scared him straight.” Solo’s voice was eerily calm, as if he were telling a bedtime story to a favored niece. “He ran off, and when he resurfaced next, some kind soul took him in like a stray puppy. Lucky him. He finished high school. Even went on to college. On the taxpayer’s dime, probably.”

Rey whirled around, hardly registering Solo’s artificial expression of sympathy. Finn had mentioned running away from the military academy he’d been placed in as a child. It had sounded like a harrowing escape from a hellhole. He’d worked hard to make something of himself. And Solo was _mocking_ him?

A sort of fury began to bubble inside her. Something harsh and ferocious that made her shake. Her chin trembled and her eyes burned, but not with unshed tears. She was only slightly aware that she’d moved slightly closer to Solo, her hands bunched in tight fists, her body tense. Preparing. Waiting.

“Kid’s had a rough life. Descended from parasites, a burden on the state welfare system.” Solo sighed. “A hair away from being just another statistic … Must drive the guy wild knowing that no matter how much money he makes or how smart he might be, or how great a lawyer he might become, deep down, he’s just another useless, pathetic _parasite_ himself —”

Rey’s arm lashed out almost at the same time the word left his mouth. And Solo’s expression changed a split second before her fist buried itself into his nose with a satisfying crunch.

The yellow light in Ben Solo’s eyes abruptly vanished. The office, too, seemed to disappear and a red haze descended. There was the heavy thud of a body hitting the floor, and with an almost-growl, Rey followed the direction of the sound by pure instinct, burying her fists in flesh over and over again.

She could only see that red haze that hung in front of her eyes, could only hear the roaring in her ears and the harsh, almost animalistic pants that hissed between her lips as she pummeled that despicable face, kicked the supine body, ignoring the yells and then the gurgling noises that came from the gaping mouth, insensible to the sounds of tearing flesh and breaking bones.

Soon, the red she saw wasn’t just in her eyes, but on her hands, her arms, on the stately pile carpet beneath her feet ...

Everywhere.


	6. Gone

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The penultimate chapter! We're getting down to the home stretch. I really appreciate everyone who has read and/or commented to this point!

Rey had seen the slim man with the pince nez before. She’d had no idea what his function was within the company, but on occasion she’d seen him in all-hands meetings quiet as a shadow, taking notes on a yellow legal pad that seemed about 10 years old. She didn’t know his name or anything about him other than the fact that his stupid fucking glasses annoyed her. This was a hell of a time to find out that the man was Snoke Incorporated's general counsel.

She sat stiffly in what she assumed was this man’s office, staring at nothing. Her hands were tight with dried blood. Her outfit was spotted with red. The only time Pince Nez had allowed her to clean up a little was when he handed her a tissue to wipe a smear of Ben Solo’s blood off her chin. Rey thought he did so not out of courtesy but because looking at it freaked him out.

Rey still wasn’t sure how she even got there. She couldn’t recall how Solo’s door was finally opened, or anything about the hands that had pulled her away from Solo’s bloodied face and body, or how she’d been frogmarched to an unfamiliar office with ugly drapes to talk to the man in the pince nez. She wasn’t sure what was going to happen now. Solo had been whisked away, bleeding but conscious and blubbering. She had been somewhat surprised that she hadn’t been shoved directly into the back of a police car and tossed into a jail cell.

The only thing Rey _was_ sure about was that what had happened was all over the building by now. At least she’d given her fellow worker bees something to chew on around the coffee maker. The conversations _had_ been getting stale.

Pince Nez cleared his throat and read from a piece of paper, intoning in a bored, faintly strident voice that she, Rey Walker, was heretofore dismissed from her position at Snoke Incorporated. There would be no severance. There would be no COBRA. There would be no payout for unused vacation time. There would be nothing, as if she’d never existed, as if her work there had been a figment of everyone’s imagination. She would leave the building, escorted by guards and spotted with Ben Solo’s blood. Whatever belongings she had in her desk would be mailed to her home. Did she understand?

Rey nodded wordlessly. Pince Nez peered down his nose at her for a moment before picking up the phone. She heard him tell whoever was on the other end that “Employee 48637” had been terminated and that the contents of the desk in cubicle T-45 should be packed in a box ASAP.

She made no move during this conversation. Rey felt strangely detached. She’d never known her employee number or that her cubicle even had a designation, let alone what it had been. It was if she were watching a TV show. This wasn’t happening to her — it was happening to creatures made of pixels and light on a small phone screen.

It all seemed so surreal. Even with the dried blood still on her hands, it seemed like something she was viewing from outside her body. Though she recalled with relish that she’d opened up a huge gash from Solo’s hairline to his chin. It would leave a huge-ass scar and make him even uglier.

Pince Nez pushed a piece of paper and a pen at her, directing her in that same disinterested drone to sign and date the bottom.

Rey looked down. It was a one-page, typed paper with **DISMISSAL FOR CAUSE** in huge, black letters at the top. She blinked her eyes clear and read the first two lines, which seemed to her to be in incomprehensible legal-speak.

She jolted as a memory took hold of her. _Legal-speak_ …

Once, when she and Finn had been relaxing in each other’s arms after one of their mind-blowing fucks, he’d mentioned that at parties, people often wanted him to give them free legal advice, and that he invariably told them to never sign anything they didn’t understand — particularly at a point of crisis. Ask for time to read it, or better yet, get a lawyer to decipher it. Most would do it for free or nominal cost, something that a lot of people seemed not to know. Signing something blindly could create a lot of problems.

Rey looked at Pince Nez, her mouth set in a hard line.

“No. I’m not signing this. I’m fired? Fine. I never want to see this place again. But I’m _not_ signing anything.”

Pince Nez goggled at her open-mouthed, then seemed to realize how ridiculous he looked. In a slightly more guarded tone, he asked if she _quite_ understood her position. She had willfully and _without provocation_ — he emphasized that last point — attacked a top-ranking Snoke Incorporated executive, injuring him severely. That she hadn’t been dragged away in handcuffs was a mercy owing to the Chairman himself. If she thought she was going to be able to squeeze something out of a situation _she_ had caused, she could think again and see how she liked the hospitality of the police.

Rey’s eyes narrowed and her lips drew back in almost a snarl. She wasn't sure what he meant about the Chairman, but she really didn't give a shit.

She shoved the paper and pen back across the desk so hard that they nearly ended up in Pince Nez’s lap.

“Then have me arrested. He’s been sexually harassing me for months. I’m sure the police would be interested in hearing that _and_ how he locked me in his office and wouldn’t let me out when I asked.”

The nose beneath the pince nez twitched.

“Ms. Walker, telling falsehoods won’t help you. I would know if you’d lodged any complaints about any employee of Snoke Incorporated making _untoward_ advances.”

“ _Right_. Like you knew about all those women last year who suddenly ‘disappeared’?” She glared. “Anyone who said a thing about him got the boot. You wanted to keep your job, you shut up about it or you packed your box. HR has a bloody _paragraph_ saying just that!”

Pince Nez colored and cleared his throat.

“You're quite mistaken. We at Snoke Incorporated take such allegations very seriously.” He suddenly wasn't looking at her. “And as to those slanders against Mr. Solo — none of those spurious claims were proven _or_ pursued.”

“He’s protected by his money and his influence. Shocker.” Rey folded her arms. “Like I said, I’m not signing that paper. Either let me leave or call the police.”

Pince Nez’s Adam’s apple bobbed and he looked down at the paper briefly. He reached again for the phone.

“Yes … put me through to the Chairman, please. It’s Opan. Yes, I’m aware of that, but this is urgent. Yes, I can hold …” He drummed his fingers lightly on his desk. “Yes? Oh, yes, sir. It’s Opan. I deeply apologize for interrupting you — yes, it is extremely important. I have the girl here in my office … yes, _that_ girl. Well, the problem is, she is refusing to sign the release. She claims Mr. Solo sexually harassed her and kept her captive in his office. … Well, yes sir, the door _was_ locked from the outside. ... I’m not sure, sir. He must have accidentally engaged the external lock somehow. Yes ... the override had to be used, but that could have just been a malfunction. At any rate, I suggest we call the police and let them sort it out. It’s at least third-degree assault.”

Rey’s bottom lip trembled slightly. This was it. She was actually going to jail over Ben Piece of Shit Solo.

Pince Nez’s eyes suddenly went almost comically wide behind his glasses. He looked as if he were about to be sick.

“Sir, I would have to _strongly_ advise against that. The allegations couldn’t be … yes, but if she doesn’t sign the release, there’s the possibility that the company will be — no, I very much doubt that, but still, the possibility would _exist_ … I don’t see the harm in lodging an official complaint with the authorities. Mr. Solo was very badly hurt, and —”

He winced, holding the phone receiver away his ear. Rey could hear aggrieved growling sounds coming from the phone. Nothing that sounded quite human.

“Yes … yes, I understand. Yes, sir. Right away, Chairman. Yes. Yes, of course. Thank you for —”

He blinked and his jaw went slack in a way that told Rey that Chairman Snoke had hung up on him, probably slamming the phone down in the process.

It took Pince Nez a few moments to collect himself. When he looked at Rey again, his face was a deep, painful-looking red. Not taking his eyes off her, he jabbed angrily at his phone, his mouth set in a stingy, hard line.

“This is Opan in Legal. I called about Employee 48637 a few minutes ago. Send someone up to my office immediately. She is to be escorted out of this building right _now_. If she attempts to return to the premises, you will detain her for arrest.”

Pince Nez slammed the phone down and sneered.

“You’re very lucky the Chairman simply wants you out of here as expeditiously as possible. You wouldn’t be getting off so lightly if Mr. Solo weren’t going to make a full recovery. For reasons I can't begin to understand, Mr. Solo does not seem inclined to press charges and the Chairman is backing him up on this. It's very likely your assault has made him temporarily insensible to reason. Don't look so smug. He'll come to his senses and you'll get fitted for a lovely orange jumpsuit in due time. You’re a very _stupid_ girl.” He eyed her coldly. “And you have quite overestimated your _charms_ to delude yourself that Mr. Solo would ever be interested in the likes of _you_.”

Rey grit her teeth to hide her fear at the ominous words, her hands digging into the soft upholstery of the chair.

“Can I go?”

“You’ll wait,” he snapped. “You _will_ be escorted out. Attempt to leave here without a guard, and I _will_ call the authorities, regardless of what the Chairman says.”

Rey made a wry face at him, but the frost in his expression told her that he was probably serious. She sank back into the chair, hoping that she wasn’t going to have to sit under that glower for very long.

Much to her relief, after a few moments, there was a neat knock on the door. A uniformed security guard stepped into the office in response to Pince Nez’s angry bark of acknowledgment. The man was youngish with a reddish beard. Rey thought she’d seen him before, mainly patrolling the parking lot.

The guard cleared his throat. “You called for a termination escort, sir?”

Rey grimaced. What _lovely_ terminology.

Pince Nez pointed at Rey with the pen she’d shoved at him.

“You’re to march her straight out of the building and you will _not_ leave until you’ve ensured she is off the property. If she attempts to return for any reason, detain her in the guards’ barracks and call the police immediately. She’ll be trespassing.”

His eyes flashed at her as he nearly spat, “Now get _out_ of my office.”

Rey resisted the urge to give Pince Nez the finger as she walked out. As it was, he looked as if he were about to have a stroke, his face was so red. The guard looked at her with curiosity but said nothing as he stepped aside to let her exit first. Rey wasn’t sure if the guard had seen the splotches of dried blood on her clothing. She considered asking him if she stop at a bathroom to wash her hands but thought better of it.

There was utter silence in the elevator. Rey stared at nothing, her mind blank, though she sensed that the guard was keeping careful watch on her out of the corner of his eye. She wondered what he was thinking. That she was going to break down, burst into tears of regret? Fuck that. It had felt _great_ to pummel Ben Solo's face into mush. No — it had felt fucking _phenomenal_. Her knuckles still tingled from the blows she’d struck. It was perverse, but Rey gave silent thanks to the thieving assholes and marauding pervs in the Gulch whose attentions taught her to be on her guard at an early age, and helped her develop her right hook.

She was jolted out of her thoughts when the elevator shuddered to a halt and opened onto a wet, concrete floor and cold air. They were in the sub-basement, which was a subterranean shortcut to the parking lot.

Rey turned in alarm to the guard, who was holding the “open door” button of the elevator, clearly waiting for her to get out.

“Wait a minute, what is this? Why are we all the way down here? I’ve got to get my stuff. My bag is at my desk —”

The guard glanced at her, shifting uneasily.

“I don’t know … Mr. Opan said you had to be escorted off the premises immediately —”

“Come on, those are my personal belongings! My phone is in there … my _keys_ …”

“Why didn’t you get them before you went to Mr. Opan’s office?”

“They wouldn’t let me go anywhere.” Rey’s eyes dropped to her soiled shirt. “They took me straight in there and told me to sit and wait.”

The guard followed her glance, and his eyes widened.

“Wait. You’re _her_ aren’t you? _You’re_ the girl that sliced Solo’s face open.” His voice carried a hint of awe. “They said he’s really messed up. _You_ really did that?”

Rey just stared stonily at him in response and the young man swallowed hard.

“I need my bag,” she said, trying to make her voice more friendly than her expression. “If you need to call the police because of what that douche said, then do what you have to do, but I’m _not_ leaving here without it.”

The guard stood in thought for a second.

“Okay, just hold up a minute. If that’s all it is, I can run up and get it for you really quick. What’s your cubicle location?”

Rey was uncertain of what he was even talking about, but then something Pince Nez had said flashed into her consciousness.

“It’s … it’s T-45.”

He nodded. “Second floor, right side. Got it. You stay here, okay? Just _stay_ here. I’ll be right back. Is there anything else? I can’t go in your desk — they’ll box up what’s there, plus I don't want to hang around too long — but anything on your desk or whatever?”

She shivered in the slight chill of the open walkway. “Um … I have kind of a sweater coat on the back of my chair. That’s it. Just that and my bag. Thank you.”

He nodded again, stepped back into elevator and disappeared back into the building. Rey wrapped her arms around herself, chafing her arms to try to warm them. Now that the adrenaline was starting to wear off, she felt it all — the cold, the pain in her hands from punching against solid bone, and … a sharp terror. She could really go to jail. Rey wasn't sure why Solo hadn't screamed for the police right away or why the Chairman seemed to want to just hustle her out the door — to the point that he'd gone against the advice of the company's lawyer — without involving the authorities. She couldn't bring herself to hope they'd just let the matter drop. Ben Solo hadn't touched her, and she'd beaten him to within an inch of his life. He would be scarred forever, there was no changing that. Solo was rich and could crush her with lawyers, bury her under the jail, if it came to it. Maybe he _and_ the Chairman were just biding their time, gathering their thunderbolts, so to speak.

But the best-case scenario _also_ sucked. Even if she didn't go to prison, she was still screwed. She was officially unemployed _and_ broke. Getting any sort of good reference from Snoke Inc. was obviously out of the question. If she couldn’t get a job, she couldn’t make rent, which meant she would be out on the street. Being on thin ice with her landlord might hasten that eventuality.

And then what? She didn’t have a single friend in the city that could help. At least … not anymore.

Rey reflected that she couldn’t even go back to the Gulch, even if she’d wanted to voluntarily put herself in that hell again. There were too many people who’d be _very_ glad to see her again, and not for any good reasons. What she would likely need to do — if worst really came to worst — would be to sell her car for scrap and use the money to head somewhere else with a new name and maybe a new set of phony credentials.

Possibly she would skip out on an office job next time. Too risky and when it came down to it, too boring. She liked being in open air, liked being able to do more than just press buttons on a computer. She had a shit-ton of technical ability, especially when it came to cars and bikes, and she wasn’t afraid of getting her hands dirty. Maybe she’d try some far-flung garage in an anonymous town. Start from the bottom and work her way up …

“Miss?”

Rey whirled around startled, holding her hand to her chest. The guard was back, her handbag in one hand and her jacket in the other. He was breathing hard and she wondered if he’d been speaking literally about running up to the office.

“Oh. Thanks.” She shrugged into her coat and slung her bag over her shoulder. “I really appreciate it.”

“Sure.” He looked ill at ease. “Uh, I gotta see you to the gate. We’re supposed to call when we’ve escorted terminated employees off the premises. If we take too long, someone might call down to the guardhouse wondering what’s going on. If they find out I got some of your stuff for you …”

She nodded. No use getting this guy in trouble along with everything else.

They walked without speaking through the narrow walkway that connected the sub-basement with the parking lot. There was a wind tunnel effect in the tight space that blew Rey’s hair back and made her teeth ache, but the wind died down as if someone had shut off a switch as soon as they emerged into the rear of the parking lot. Rey nearly turned to the left to walk to the space where she usually parked before coming back to herself, and she swallowed hard, ignoring the curious eyes of the guards milling around the small station right at the automatic gates. She noticed that the red-bearded guard was ignoring them, too.

Slowly, the gates drew back. Rey stepped through them without a backward glance, a hollow feeling in her gut that was something more than the fact that she hadn’t eaten lunch.

“Miss?”

Rey stopped and turned around. The gate was still open, but she was officially outside the property of Snoke Incorporated with the guard standing firmly on the on the other side.

“Good luck.” He paused, then looked over his shoulder before turning back toward her, lowering his voice. “You’ve done what a lot of us here wish we could do … to _him_.”

She bit back a sigh. It was a nice sentiment, but where were people like this guard while Solo was running roughshod, saying the things he said, invading her personal space, and just being a generally creepy piece of shit? Why had it been up to her? Why did _she_ have to pay the price?

But she thought with a hot shame about how she’d basically kissed Solo’s ass when it seemed at first that she was going to keep her job. That guard and others like him might be cowardly — though possibly _meek_ was a kinder and more accurate word — but they were also something she wasn’t: Employed. They knew who they were working for and how things were. And as such, _they_ wouldn’t have to worry where their next meal would come from or where they would sleep at night.

“You’re welcome,” she said tonelessly before turning and walking away from the gray, oppressive atmosphere of Snoke Incorporated forever.

A few blocks away, suddenly weary, Rey found a small bench and sat down. It was as much to get off her feet as it was to weigh her immediate options. She had exactly two dollars and twenty-one cents in her wallet. Taking the bus _or_ light rail to her apartment would cost two dollars, and she required both. She could cut her commute in half, take the light rail  _or_ the bus, and just walk the rest of the way. _Or_ she could save her money, walk the four miles to her apartment, buy six packs of ramen and have a meal each day for the next two weeks. It had been a while since she’d had to ration food, but if growing up in the Gulch had been good for anything, it taught her how to survive on very little.

With a smothered sigh, she stood up and stretched up on her toes to get her muscles loose. The wind had picked up and she felt chilled to the marrow. Her coat was really just a sweater with a slight cowl to wear in the office when the air conditioning got to be too much. She walked now with one hand holding it closed, never being so sorry until that moment that the damn thing didn’t have any buttons.

The city center eventually gave way to stretches of bare earth and abandoned buildings that dotted the outskirts of the main business zone. As she walked, Rey had to quiet some of the thoughts swirling in her head. Rey didn’t want to second-guess what she’d done — regardless of the potential consequences. Solo had it coming, that was all. He was a slimeball who’d been allowed to operate unchecked for too long. Maybe  now he’d think twice before trying to corner some young woman with promises of making her his _queen_. As if _that_ was any sort of realistic or enticing offer.

Still, she had to wonder if there could have been a better way. Maybe if she’d just escaped when Orta Tarkin had come in. Maybe if she’d told Solo she’d “think about” his nasty-ass proposition ...

But Solo had sealed his fate the moment he’d said the first negative thing against Finn. Not that Finn would ever know — thank goodness — but Rey felt a quiet satisfaction about caving in Solo’s nose for his horrible statements about him. Finn deserved so much better, and hopefully he was getting it, snug and secure and happy in his relationship with —

“Rey!”

Rey slowed down a little, shaking her head. Now she was even starting to hear Finn’s voice in her mind.

“Rey, wait!”

She stopped, her heart doing its best to pound out of her chest.

Rey whirled round as if on a platform and saw a dark sedan slowing down and a door opening. Finn jumped out almost before the car had stopped moving.

She stood transfixed, still not quite sure whether to believe her eyes as she watched him lean in to say something to the driver before half-jogging over to her.

“I was afraid I’d gone the wrong way. Are you okay?”

Rey took him in. It was really Finn, right there. No hallucination, no daydream, no hormone-induced fantasy. He was in a dark suit and a red tie that picked up the warm tones in his skin, and _no_ she was _not_ going to notice how hot he was and how _she_ , in contrast, probably looked like something out of a horror movie, in the midst of the greatest crisis in her life —

Well the second-greatest, though the realization that her family was never coming back for her _just_ barely beat it out.

They stared at each other in silence for a few seconds. It was a few seconds more before Rey finally felt that she could talk without sounding like her throat had been turned inside out.

“Finn? What are you doing here?”

Finn started to speak, then his eyes went huge.

“Wait a minute … is that _blood_ on your shirt?”

“Yes, but it’s not mine.” She stared at him in disbelief. “What are you doing _here_?”

Finn forced his eyes away from her shirt.

“I was walking a client out and I overheard Maz telling someone that she’d just heard some sort of brouhaha went down at Snoke Inc. and someone was hurt bad. There wasn’t more information being released. I just had a feeling you were involved somehow, and I was worried, so I tried texting you. When you didn’t text back, I called, but you didn’t answer.”

“You called me?”

She frowned and opened her bag, momentarily afraid that the awestruck guard might have taken a souvenir _,_ knowing that she couldn’t get it back without running the risk of being carted away in handcuffs.

Rey sighed in relief when she spotted the phone in a small pocket of the rucksack, where she'd put it before going up to Solo's office.

She took it out, scanning the missed call and text notifications in quiet disbelief. “Shit. I had it on silent.”

“Oh. That explains it, then. But, I wasn’t sure if … if you just didn’t want to talk to me or whatever,” he said, his face bent toward the ground. “So I called the Snoke Inc. switchboard and asked if I could be sent directly to your voicemail and the guy said no one by that name was employed there. Something about the way he said it made me really nervous. So I told my LAA to reschedule my morning meetings so I could come down here and find out for myself what was going on.”

His gaze returned to her shirt, and Rey saw him swallow hard.

“Rey, what happened?”

She decided to sidestep the question while she got some semblance of her wits about her. Finn just _appearing_ had majorly thrown her for a loop.

“How did you find me? If they weren’t telling you anything on the phone, why would they tell you where’d I gone?”

“They didn’t. Well, not really.”

“Huh?”

“First, I told the Uber driver to go to the front of the building.” Finn waved toward the idling sedan. “But there was some sort of road work going and the construction guys directed us toward the parking lot. So we swung around. But the gate was closed and the guard told me the building was on lockdown. I was  _real_ nervous then. The only reason I was sure there wasn't, like, an active shooter scenario is that there weren't cops all over the place. I mentioned your name and that I wanted to talk to you. I said I was your …”

He paused, and Rey’s heart raced. He’d said he was her what? Boyfriend? Lover? She would even take friend …

“You said you were my …?”

“I said I was your lawyer.”

Her heart plunged nearly to her shoes.

“… Oh.”

“I thought it might get me in the door, you know, or at least get me some information, especially if you were in trouble or hurt somehow,” he said hurriedly, as if noting her disappointment. “But the guy at the gate just said if we didn't get lost, he'd call the cops. The driver got a little skittish hearing that, so we pulled out.”

Finn tilted his head. “We were about to turn down the street, but then this guy came running up. He had the same uniform as the dickhead at the gate, but it wasn’t the same guy. This guy had kind of a beard. Young. Redhead. He said you weren’t in the building anymore, but he thought he saw you walking toward Batuu Road. That didn’t make sense to me, but it was all I had to go on, so I told the driver to go east on Batuu, since to the west there’s nothing but access roads to the highway. I couldn’t believe it was you at first. Where are you going?”

She sighed softly. “My apartment.”

“Why aren’t you driving? That’s why I thought that redheaded guy might have given me bad intel. Where’s your car?”

“The same place it's been been for the past few weeks — broken down and pissing oil down the street from my building.”

Her voice was hard because she wanted to drown out the low chant in her brain.

_He was worried … He came back for me … He came back for me … Finn came back for me …_

He lifted a brow. “Well, if you’re going home, why aren’t you taking the bus or the light rail? The Kashyyk Junction transit center is two blocks in the other direction.”

“I’d have to take both.” Rey paused, and then decided she was too tired to continue the pretense. “And I barely have money for even one, so … I was walking.”

Finn lightly touched her arm. “Can you tell me what happened?”

“Ben Solo summoned me to his office for a talk… he said things about …” She drew a deep shaky breath. “He locked me in his office and he _said_ things … and he wouldn't let me out and ... I … hit him. I kept hitting him until people pulled me away and took him to the hospital. I got fired. The end.”

Finn took a step toward her, questions in his eyes. But he seemed to catch himself at the last moment, giving a brief, hard nod.

“I’m not gonna let you _walk_ in this cold. Come on, I’ll tell the driver to drop you off at home.”

Rey didn’t want to refuse. Knew she wasn’t going to. She was exhausted and felt defeated. It was charity — and from a man who it hurt her heart to even look at — but she knew she’d take it.

But she also knew that she didn’t want to go home. Home to what? Bad plumbing, the smell of incipient mold, and an empty cupboard?

There’d be time enough for that. That aspect of her life wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. But if Finn had cared enough to leave work to come find her, then maybe … maybe …

“Not there. Please.” Her eyes fixed onto his. “I need to get out of these clothes. Wash his _smell_ off them. I need a shower — a hot one for a change. I don’t have quarters for the laundromat or a hot water heater that does what it’s supposed to do. I need somewhere I can ... just do _things_ to feel like a person again.”

Finn held her gaze. Smiled slowly, his eyes crinkling at the corners in a way that Rey had always found hopelessly adorable.

“I think I know just the place.”

His expression was gentle, nonjudgmental, open. Welcoming.

Rey hesitated just a click before shrugging and slipping her bag over her opposite shoulder.

“Then let’s go.”


	7. I Thought She Knew

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! Extra-long chapter, though the final part can be considered an epilogue of sorts!

Walking into Finn’s place wasn’t as jarring as Rey thought it would be. It was as if she’d just been there, and she supposed in the grand scheme of things, six weeks wasn’t really that long ago. Yet, she was somewhat annoyed at how relaxed she felt walking through the doors, putting her coat on the back of a dining room chair and her bag on the table just like she’d always done, wordlessly taking the grapefruit Lacroix that he offered her and downing half of it in one continuous swallow.

Her thirst quenched, she studied the can somewhat critically. Finn hadn’t even really been into Lacroix before they’d hooked up, and yet he still had what looked like a case of them in his fridge.

Rey grimaced and the aftertaste seemed bitter suddenly. Maybe he had them around because _Rose_ liked them.

Finn seemed somewhat distracted as he told her to make herself at home and to leave her soiled clothing in front of the bathroom for him to throw in the washing machine — unless, he’d said with a grin, she wanted to try her hand at his “fancy equipment.” Rey had declined but accepted the huge hoodie he’d given her to wear until her clothing was done. It was one of his law school sweatshirts and it hung just past her knees.

Dumping everything except her underwear in an untidy pile, she shut the bathroom door and marched over to the shower, resisting the urge to check for “clues” as to another woman’s presence. It didn’t really work like that anyway, she knew. She’d used Finn’s body wash and shampoo plenty of times in the past — just as she would do now. Not finding anything scented like flowers and spice didn’t necessarily mean that Rose hadn’t all but moved into his townhome. Rey wasn’t about to go searching his medicine cabinet for other … possible signs of cohabitation.

Running the shower as hot as she could stand it, she climbed in gratefully, just standing under the water, letting it literally wash away her sins. Not that tearing Ben Solo’s face open was a _sin_ , necessarily, but it _hadn’t_ exactly been her finest moment.

_But it brought Finn to me …_

She clamped down on that thought before it could germinate. No, that was _not_ a good thing. He obviously felt sorry for her, and once she was clean and relatively presentable, he’d be politely ushering her out the door.

Rey scrubbed at her hair, trying to let the gloom that had suddenly descended roll off her back like the water that was cascading from above. It didn’t matter, not really. She was leaving town anyway. Once she put enough miles and time between her and Finn, things would be … well … they’d _be._

She soaped herself up twice, determined to get every trace of Ben Solo’s DNA off her body — and _ew_ at how that had sounded in her head — and decided to get out before the water could turn cool. Wrapping up in a fluffy towel, she squinted at herself in the fogged mirror over the sink, wondering what it was that was catching her attention. Something that she’d noticed in her periphery but couldn’t quite …

She realized what it was after she’d wrapped her wet hair in a towel and turned to grab another to twist around her body. Rey slowly turned toward what had caught her eye. In the windowsill of the bathroom was a plant in a translucent green pot.

A moth orchid.

 _The_ moth orchid.

Rey drew closer, fascinated. It was in a slightly smaller pot than before, which made sense as the roots of a moth orchid preferred to be confined. And it was in the _bathroom_ – a great move, as the plant thrived in humid areas and hated direct sunlight. It had grown quite a bit since she’d last seen it and was flowering beautifully, lending an understated elegance to the modern, cream-and-brushed-nickel space.

She chewed her lip thoughtfully. Finn knew next to nothing about plants — he’d told her as much many times — yet _this_ plant was thriving …

Her expression fell. Maybe it was _Rose’s_ influence.

Suddenly finding the bathroom stifling, Rey left quickly and fled to the relative safety of Finn’s bedroom. She could hear him somewhere in the direction of the kitchen, talking to someone on the phone.

She frowned, pulling on his hoodie. He was probably talking to Rose. He’d have to tell her something, after all, to explain his absence from their usual lunch date. She couldn’t quite hear what he was saying, but she figured it was something along the lines of: “Sorry, darling, but my ex-fuckbuddy beat the shit out of her ex-boss and got tossed out on her ass, and I felt like being a good Samaritan today.”

A few minutes went by before the soft knock on the door.

“Rey? You decent?” Finn’s voice was slightly muffled.

She looked down at herself. Close enough.

“Yeah, I guess.”

Finn entered, looking pensive. His gaze was firmly above her neck, as if he feared she might be in some state of undress after all.

“Are you hungry? I don’t really have anything here, but I could order something.”

“I don’t want to put you to any trouble.” She ignored the rumble in her stomach at the mention of food. “If you have some crackers and peanut butter or something, that would be fine. Don’t you have to go back to work soon?”

“No, I was just on the phone with Gemma, my LAA. I told her I wasn’t coming back in today. Personal emergency.”

He regarded her contemplatively. “I also got in a quick chat with Maz. She said her _sources_ told her Solo’s going to be in the hospital overnight, but he should be discharged sometime tomorrow. He’s getting a lot of stitches in his face, and apparently already scheduled a consult with a plastic surgeon.”

She stared at the floor so Finn couldn’t see the smile lifting her lips. _Good._

 _“_ The police were there and he’s refusing to name his attacker or press charges.” Finn’s eyebrows were high. “Snoke shooed them out, saying it was an internal matter that had been dealt with already, and that their input wasn't needed.”

Rey pondered that a moment. “Finn, that doesn’t make sense. I really don’t understand why I didn’t get arrested. It makes me nervous … like maybe they’re waiting until they have something more on me so that they can _really_ let me have it.”

Finn’s brow wrinkled. “Something more like what? It’s not like you have a record or anything.”

She went silent. While that was technically true, she _had_ more or less stolen a car. If the police traced her back to the Gulch, they might find Plutt. Then again, it was unlikely Plutt would rat her out. He hated the cops. Plus, _he_ was the one who’d stolen the car to begin with.

“Does that matter? I mean if someone attacked me in _my_ office, I’d expect them to be arrested, not just told to pack their things and leave.” She carded an agitated hand through her wet hair. “It’s not like Solo is some anonymous schlub — he’s Snoke’s golden boy. Even that asshole lawyer told Snoke that I would get charged with third-degree assault.”

“You said Solo locked you into his office, right?” said Finn, leaning against a chest of drawers. “And when you told him to let you out, he wouldn’t. Right?”

Rey shuddered at the memory of that ominous click … of being backed up against a locked door with Ben Solo advancing on her … of that empty grin and those horrible yellow eyes…

She nodded.

“Well that settles it. Usually, the only time you can use physical force against someone is in self-defense,” said Finn. “In this state, you can even use lethal force if you can prove you had no other choice to save your life.”

“But … it wasn’t self-defense,” said Rey. “I mean, I don’t know that he was going to … try anything. I would’ve kneed him straight in the nuts if I thought he’d go _there_. But he didn’t … hit me or anything.”

“He didn’t have to. The moment he locked you in against your will, it was false imprisonment. In that light, your actions _were_ self-defense. You didn’t know what he would do, and you used force to try to escape an unjust confinement. It's on the books.”

Rey guiltily thought that in the moment, she hadn’t been thinking of escaping anything. She’d been single-minded in her desire to pound Ben Solo’s face into mush. But that was likely why she was not a lawyer.

Finn scoffed lightly. “Third-degree assault? Snoke would do better to sink some of that money he used to send people to Canto Bight into getting a GC who didn’t sleep through first-year tort law.”

She looked up at him, a small smile on her face. He raised both eyebrows again.

“What? What’s the smile for?”

“Nothing … I just … you sounded so … _lawyerly_ just now. Like Leonard McCoy.”

“ _Who_?”

“The guy on Law and Order. McCoy … the guy with the eyebrows.” She made gestures toward her face.

Finn’s face broke into a wide grin.

“I think you mean _Jack_ McCoy. He’s the guy who played the DA. Leonard McCoy is the doctor on the original Star Trek.”

“Oh.” Rey felt the flush creep up her neck. “Well … that guy has eyebrows, too, doesn’t he?”

Finn started to laugh, but seemed to reconsider its appropriateness and half-coughed.

“So are you saying that even though I did what I did, I might not go to jail?”

“The DA could decide to press charges even if Solo wouldn’t, but I have friends in her office, and it’s unlikely, given all the facts, that she’d pursue anything against you. If anything, you could blister Solo’s ass for locking you in his office. And you should — false imprisonment is a felony here, and Solo could end up spending some quality time in jail. That’s probably why Snoke wanted you bundled out of there as soon as possible and wanted you to sign that release. Probably why he told Solo to drop it. There's one thing I still don't get though ...”

Rey wasn't sure she liked the sound of that. "What?”

“You said that he … _said_ things. He’s been saying shitty, inappropriate things to you for months. What was it that happened today that made you snap on him?”

He paused. “Did he threaten you?”

Rey shook her head slowly.

“Proposition you?”

Another shake of the head.”

“Take his dick out?”

Rey grimaced. “Well, if I _had_ been hungry, I wouldn’t be now.”

“Sorry. Did he ask you to do something dangerous and/or illegal?”

She sighed. “No, Finn.”

“Then what? _What_ was it he said that was so off that you bashed in his face and cracked several of his ribs?”

“He …” Rey massaged suddenly tight skin between her eyebrows. “He asked me to be his queen.”

Finn’s expression did something that Rey couldn’t quite describe, but it wasn’t good.

“His … what?”

“His queen,” she repeated in a dull voice. “He said he could make me his queen.”

“I _asked_ you if he propositioned you —”

“It wasn’t a proposition – it was just stupid.” She exhaled harshly. “He was going on and on about how he was royalty — technically — and how he could _raise_ me to his level.”

“Royalty? Is this guy crazy? Oh … wait, is he talking about the Naboo Protectorate?” Finn laughed in disbelief. “I mean, I _guess_? But his mother was the princess and the title died when she did. He doesn’t have claim to shit.”

“He was speaking metaphorically. Or something.”

“I don’t get it. Did _he_ snap?” Finn asked. “Why the fuck would he think you’d be into any of that when you’ve been brushing him off pretty much from jump?”

Rey raised her shoulders in a “beats me” gesture before telling Finn the background of the meeting — skirting the reasons for why she’d been making so many mistakes in the first place — and about Solo’s relative calm attitude, and the abrupt change after Orta Tarkin had come in and he’d ushered her out the door.

“Okay,” said Finn, when Rey paused for breath. “Let me get this straight. His _fiancée_ comes in, sees you, and he decides _that’s_ the time for him to shoot his shot?”

“He doesn’t want to marry her,” said Rey. “He said the Chairman thought it would be a good idea for him to marry someone of his _station_ , but Solo didn’t want _her_ specifically.”

“He wanted _you_.”

“Yeah. He wanted a nobody.”

“A what?”

“Me. A nobody.” Her shoulders rounded. “He said _I_ was a nobody and _he_ was a somebody, and I should take what he was offering because I wouldn’t be young or pretty forever and he could give me a ‘proper place’ in life. As his queen or … whatever.”

“And that’s when you hit him? When he said that?”

“Um. No.” She looked down, smoothing her hand over Finn’s bedspread just to give her hands something to do other than tremble. “I told him to shove his offer up his ass, basically, and tried to leave. That’s when I realized he’d locked me in.”

“Okay, so when you realized Solo was holding you against your will …   _that’s_ when you hit him?”

“No. Then he started saying things ... Saying horrible things about —” She faltered. “About …”

“What? What could he have said about you that was _worse_ than calling you a nobody?”

“That was just it. It wasn’t what he was saying about _me.”_ Rey’s voice was soft. “What he said about me is something I heard my entire childhood, from every corner, from everyone back in the Gulch …”

“Rey …”

“It was … what he said about someone else,” she said hurriedly, not wanting to hear that soft, comforting note in Finn’s voice. “I couldn’t take it. I wasn’t going to let him get away with it.”

“Who? Who was it?” Finn looked mystified.  “A friend of yours at work? A woman? Someone —”

“No.” She lowered her head. “He was saying awful, horrible, untrue things about … about my … boyfriend.”

There was silence, and then Finn cleared his throat.

“About Paul, you mean?” His voice sounded a little strained.

Rey glanced up, frowning, nearly asking “Paul who?” And then she remembered – Paul. Her _second_ fake boyfriend. The one she’d conjured up to push Finn to Rose.

Of course. _Paul._

And it would be easy to maintain the fiction of Paul. Finn wasn’t Ben Solo. He would take her at face value without prodding and poking and trying to find her weakness …

But she also knew that lying was what had gotten her into the whole mess. Finn had come back for her. For _her_. He’d moved on with his life, but he’d still cared enough to seek her out and he’d rescued her. She knew, then, that she owed him some measure of the truth.

No. Not _some_ measure. _The_ truth.

“Not about Paul,” she said in a low voice. “He was saying things about _you._ ”

“About _me_?” Finn looked confused. “You just said he was saying things about your _boyfriend_. How do _I_ come into this?”

“Solo thinks … thought … _you_ were my boyfriend.”

“… Why would he think that?”

Rey raised her head and forced herself to look Finn directly in the face.

“He thought that because I _told_ him you were.”

Finn made a noise in the back of his throat that reminded Rey of someone trying to cough out a fish bone.

“ _You_ told him _I_ was your boyfriend? But —”

“I know. I _know_. I was wrong. _It_ was wrong.” Rey jumped up and began pacing the floor. “I used you … and I’m — I’m sorry, Finn. But I wasn’t sure what else to do. I wasn’t really homeschooled. I don’t have the certificate you get to show you passed the boards in whatever town you lived in. The guy my parents dumped me with just shoved some random books at me and used the money he was sent for the homeschooling course to buy more junk for his business.”

She glanced over at him. “That’s why I took the car. I figured he _owed_ me that, at least.

“And that’s why finding another job has been so rough. Most jobs will want to verify if you list having a college degree, but they usually don’t check about the high school diploma or equivalency, but some do. I don’t have that proof of completion, because I never did - formally. Snoke Incorporated was the only place that didn’t ask for a copy of my certificate. I … I sort of knew that Solo knew I didn’t have it, but he gave me the job anyway, and I felt lucky and grateful, and figured I could save money to take a course to get my certificate and be legit, you know?”

She took a deep breath. “But then, Solo started coming on to me. I tried to avoid him, but he wouldn’t let up asking me to get coffee with him or lunch or calling me to his office for stupid small talk. And finally he made some comment about everyone at Snoke Inc. being ‘team players’ and that he had the Chairman’s ear and he’d hate to tell him that someone wasn’t working to be ‘part of the team.’ I knew what that meant — that I either give into him or start looking for another job. I didn’t know what to do. And then one day I was looking at that picture we took. Remember? We were at Fisto’s Retreat?”

“I remember.” Finn’s voice was soft. “That was the third time we’d, uh, hung out.”

Rey almost smiled at the understated words. It was also the first time she’d had more than one orgasm during sex — but that was neither here nor there.

“Well, he saw me looking at it and he asked me who you were, and I … I just blurted it out. I felt cornered and I thought maybe if he thought I was dating someone, he’d back off. So I told him your name and that you were a lawyer and that it was kind of new but going well, and … it worked. Sort of. He stopped the outright invitations, but he still said stupid shit and buzzed around me.”

She scowled. “I could deal with that. It was like he knew there was a line he couldn’t cross anymore, so he’d go right up to it, which still sucked, but was bearable. In a way.”

“Wow.” Finn’s voice was musing. “All this time, he thought you were dating _me_?”

Rey nodded slowly.

“But now I’m even more confused. If he thought you were with somebody, why would he start in on all the queen stuff? Especially if _he_ was with someone, too?”

She reddened. “He said that I should take vacation and go with you to someplace called the Utupau Orchards to pick apples, and I … I told him we weren’t seeing each other anymore. Because I … I thought since you and I weren’t … you know, hanging out anymore, it wasn’t appropriate to … keep saying we were in a relationship.”

Finn digested that for a second, then wrinkled his brow. “Apple-picking? But you’re allergic to apples.”

Rey fell silent, gazing at him in amazement. Finn looked utterly bewildered. Not angry, not pissed off, not annoyed. Just completely confused … because of _apples_. Because he’d remembered she was allergic to them. He’d _remembered._

“Finn, what I did wasn’t okay. Aren’t you mad?” Rey clasped her hands together nervously. “I always banged on about how we _weren’t_ in a relationship, and then I lie about us being in one to someone. You have every right to be pissed at me.”

“ _Mad_? Rey, I get it. You felt trapped, but you needed to keep your job. You said the one thing you thought might solve the problem.” He considered a moment. “If I’m upset about anything, it’s that you didn’t let me in on it. I could’ve helped you.”

Her eyes went wide. “ _Helped_ me?”

“Sure. Helped you sell it, I mean,” he said, grinning a little. “I could’ve played the part, you know? Showed up at your office to whisk you away for lunch or had flowers — uh, plants — sent to your desk. Or cases of grapefruit Lacroixs tied with ribbons. You know, being the considerate boyfriend and all. Seeing me might not have gotten Solo to completely back off, but seeing us together in the flesh might have stopped him from hanging around you as much as it sounds like he did.”

Rey was momentarily speechless.

“You would have done that … after all the times I said we weren’t in a relationship? After what I said to you when I first told you about Solo? You would have done that for _me_?”

“Why do you sound so surprised? You deserved so much better than Snoke Inc., but if it came down to you needing that job in order to get to a better place in life, of course I would have done whatever you needed.”

Her throat felt tight. “… I don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything. It’s just the truth,” said Finn. “But back to what happened today. You’re saying you hit Solo because he said something about me? He doesn’t even _know_ me.”

“He has pull. It sounds like he was able to get into your records … maybe school records or … personal things, and … he said … he said …”

“Oh. Let me guess.” His voice leaked sarcasm. “Solo told you I was a crack baby abandoned by my junkie parents and dumped into a military school, where I was later expelled because I was involved in a drive-by shooting?”

Rey stared in shock. Finn smiled, but it was a smile unconnected with anything amusing or happy.

“Am I close?”

“Well, sort of? He said your parents were addicted to drugs and started a fire in an apartment that killed people. And that you were in a gang and saw a friend die right in front of you …”

To Rey’s surprise, Finn laughed — albeit somewhat darkly.

“Yeah, he did some digging all right. Probably spent a lot of time and money on it. Too bad it’s all bullshit.”

“It _is_?” Rey’s gaze turned inward. She again saw herself pummeling Ben Solo’s face into mush, and she felt vindicated. “I knew it! I knew he was a liar!”

“Well, not so much a liar, as misinformed.” Finn shrugged. “The stuff he dug up is all official record — for now. Just a remnant of the ineffectual Tarisian municipal government. I’m going to get in there one day and turn their asses inside out. But I’ve gotta be patient. I’m just a junior associate. Gotta make partner before I can take on a whole city.”

“You were born in Taris Pass?”

It was the first Rey had heard that. Taris Pass was a rough-edged city in a coastal state. It had been a beautiful metropolis once, but war and neglect had turned it into little more than a depressed wasteland.

“Yeah. I know. I don’t have the accent.” He looked bemused. “My dad didn’t either, but he wasn’t from there. He disappeared before I was born. He was looking for his sister. She’d been snatched by some cult when she was a kid, and he got some kind of lead on where she was. All I know is that it was somewhere near the Narrows. But he vanished and was never heard from again. He probably was caught by the cult and killed. That was almost 27 years ago.”

Rey’s stomach knotted. She wanted to touch Finn, hug him, hold him, maybe, but she wasn’t sure how he’d respond to that.

“My mom was a social worker. I don’t remember her much, but sometimes, I think I can picture her face. I was three when the fire happened.” Finn gnawed his bottom lip. “The building she died in was a residential facility for recovering drug addicts. It was sort of combination rehab/counseling center. The fire started because of bad wiring that violated all sorts of building codes that the city had decided to ignore, because, hey, who gives a fuck about ex-junkies trying to get their lives back on track?” The anger in his voice was palpable.

“The city decided to cover up their negligence by saying it was started by an addict. Since my mother was the only person there not a resident, they decided to pin it on her, figuring she must have been some transient whose family wouldn’t put up a fight or sue. They guessed right. There was no family. And suddenly, I was an orphan, so I became a ward of the court. I was shipped off to the Narrows to become another cog in the country’s war machine. At three years old.”

“Oh, Finn …” Rey only had hazy memories of her parents, but she knew they had not been good people. Finn’s father and mother had both died trying to help others. “I’m sorry.”

“… And as for the gang thing, that’s mainly true. I _was_ in a gang.” He sighed softly. “It was stupid, I admit that. At school, I didn’t have too many friends. I was too much of a nerd or whatever. I liked to read for fun. I liked logic puzzles. I was first in all my lessons, and kind of a teacher’s pet — not that I liked that any more than anyone else did. It was pretty lonely. But there was this one guy … his name was Alvin but we called him Slip. I don’t even remember why. He was three weeks younger than me and we shared a room and he was really the closest thing to a friend I had there.

“He wasn’t really, um, a scholar,” said Finn. “He was sort of shit at the training exercises, too. I tried to help him as much as I could, but …” He sighed again. “He fell in with this stupid fucking gang — there’s tons of them in the Narrows. They specialized in robbing rich tourists and fencing swag. Slip said he just wanted to get enough money to leave. I didn’t have a good feeling about it. I was worried for him. I thought that maybe if I could just keep an eye on him, keep him from making mistakes that would be painful and permanent  …”

Rey nodded in understanding. “So you joined, too.”

He grimaced. “I hated it from the beginning. It was just a bunch of stupid, violent, ugly assholes beating and/or robbing people. I never participated in any of that shit, so I wasn’t too popular there, either. I tried to tell Slip that it was dangerous, that there had to be another way out. That maybe when I got to college, he could come with me, maybe try to get loans or work his way through school. I tried to tell him anything to get him out of there, and I thought I was making some progress. He wasn’t into it after awhile. Stopped going on some of their raids. But not all of them.”

Finn breathed in and held it for a second before exhaling in one long whoosh.

“And then one night he decided to go out on a raid. He said it would be the last one, and he’d stop for good and get on the next ferry out of there. He had some money saved up, but it wasn’t enough. Said it would be easy — in and out. Well, it wasn’t easy. A rival gang was waiting for us. Me and Slip had guns — we could smuggle our firearms off campus if we were smart about it. Slip was a decent shot, and when things started popping off, he was able to wound a guy. But before I could do anything, someone got him. He dropped.”

He was looking in her direction, but Rey doubted that he could see anything except the nightmare he was currently reliving.

“I knew he was gone the second he fell … but he reached up and kind of touched my face. … His blood …”

Finn inhaled again, as if trying to breathe away the image.

“I ran. I didn’t even drop the gun. No money, no plan. Just the clothes on my back and a fucking gun that could be reported as stolen. I got lucky and was able to stow away on a freighter that was leaving the Narrows for the mainland. By the time I got over here, I was dehydrated, hungry as fuck, and basically sure I was going to die. I didn’t know where I was on the mainland and I didn’t care. I just wanted water. That’s all I could think about. I started walking and after about three hours, my strength started to give out. Another hour and I was basically crawling and everything was going dark …

“Then just when I thought I was gone, I saw this weird-looking house. I used everything I had left to get there. There was a bucket of rainwater at the side of the house. I drank until my stomach hurt and then passed out. The next thing I knew, I was waking up in a bed and this tiny, old lady with these crazy glasses was staring down at me. She told me her name was Maz Kanata and that I’d drank the rainwater she’d been collecting for her petunias, that I was lucky birds hadn’t shit in it, and I definitely needed a shower.”

Finn shook his head, smiling at the memory. “I was afraid that if she knew I’d escaped from the Narrows, she’d just call someone at the academy to come get me. I was trying to think of some cover story, but she kind of gave me this look that I would be wasting my time lying. She gave me food and water and medicine and told me I could stay as long as I went to school, watered the lawn, and didn’t play anything by Kanye West in her hearing. I couldn't believe it — it was like something out of a fairytale. I didn’t know at the time that she was one of the best defense lawyers in the region, or that she could tell a runaway from the Narrows in two seconds, _or_ that she’d tried to get the academy shut down decades earlier but had been stopped by bigwigs in the Arkanis City Council. But she had some juice. She was able to get guardianship transferred from the academy to her. She even smoothed over the stolen gun thing. _And_ she was able to get something like a funeral for Slip. I finished high school and then I went to college. And then to law school, even though Maz told me lawyers for the most part were a bunch of pricks. She’s kinda right, but there _are_ exceptions.”

He smiled gently at Rey. “So, I don’t give a fuck what people like Solo think they know about me, because I know they really don’t know shit. What they can conjure up and put on a bunch of useless pieces of paper isn’t anywhere near the life I’ve lived. … But Rey, what he said about _you_ is wrong too. You’re not a ‘nobody.’”

Rey, who’d been enraptured by Finn’s story, nearly groaned as reality rudely asserted itself.

“Finn, I am. I’m not like you … I mean, Leonis is really your last name, isn’t it?”

He looked thrown by the question. “Uh … yeah.”

“And you know who your parents were, right?”

“Yes, but —”

“And what their names were?”

He paused a moment. “My dad’s name was Zare, but I didn’t find that out until I was in college and I was able to dig it up with help from Maz, since no one in the Tarisian municipal services knows how to do anything except tell you to fuck off. My mom’s name was Menna. That was easier to uncover. It was in a news article I found about the fire.”

“They were both heroes,” said Rey. “Your dad was trying to rescue his sister. Your mum was trying to help people who needed kindness and understanding. They didn’t leave you on purpose. Neither of them were drunks who decided they could maneuver better without you and dumped you in the desert with a nasty brute of a man who’d call himself your “Uncle” for 16 years and barely feed or educate you. Not that the academy sounds like it was much better, but …”

Rey darted a glance at him and lowered her head.

“You’re _somebody_ , Finn. You’re a lawyer. You’re successful. You’re Zare and Menna Leonis’s son. I’m just … Rey. Just _Rey._ I don’t know who my parents were, except pieces of shit. ‘Walker’ isn’t even my real last name. I don’t have one. Or at least, I don’t know what it is. Plutt didn’t bother to ask my parents before they left me with him. I got my last name out of a book I found in a junk heap. It was about a man who lost his wife and daughter and wandered the country trying to find them again. The main character’s last name was Walker, and I loved the idea of a man never giving up on finding his family, so I just sort of adopted Walker as my last name. But it’s not really _mine_. I don’t have a history or a family or a job or a future. He’s garbage and I don’t regret what I did to him, but Ben Solo was right — I _am_ a nobody.”

Finn walked over and took her hands in his, looking at her in silence for a moment.

“Rey, that’s bullshit. You _are_ somebody. It doesn’t matter what your parents were or weren’t. You’re _you_. You’re _Rey._ A survivor, remember? And one of the strongest people I’ve ever met. I’m not just saying that because you were able to break a grown man’s jaw, either.”

She laughed a little, but Finn’s face was quietly serious.

“I mean it. People like Solo like to try to tear people down, make them feel small, like they’re nothing without him. But it’s not true. To have survived what you did, in that _place_ , and come out on the other side as well adjusted and compassionate and smart and kind as you are? Weaklings don’t do that. Neither do _nobodies_. You don’t need to be _his_ queen or anybody else’s. You don’t need him or anyone to give your life meaning or give you purpose or a name or anything. You’re already Rey, and that’s worth all the fucking kingdoms — past, present or future — in the world.”

Rey looked at him, and then down to where their fingers were intertwined. Her stomach felt odd, as if she’d swallowed a bowl of feathers, and her heart was beating out of rhythm and her throat felt dry. It wasn’t just the quiet conviction of Finn’s statement that affected her or the fact that what she’d said to Solo earlier was almost exactly what Finn was saying to her now. It was the realization of something she’d known all along, a feeling that she’d fought against all along – and that she realized now had to be voiced or she’d explode.

Rey looked up at him, caught in the dark, earnest gaze, tasting her heartbeat. Her brow was wet with sweat and her hands shook within his.

“Finn, I…”

“Don’t argue with me, Rey. I’m serious. I —”

“— Finn, I love you.”

“— don’t want you to think I’m —”

And he stopped speaking so abruptly, she could almost see his words making skid marks in the air.

“… What?” His eyes searched hers. “ _What_?”

She could hear the incredulity in his voice, but he didn’t let go of her hands and he didn’t take his eyes off her face. Rey knew that she had a window of time in which she could laugh and wave away the words, or qualify them in a “Oh, Finn, I love you for saying that and making me feel better” sort of way, and Finn would laugh, too, and the strange light in his eyes would fade, and he’d leave the room and …

No.

“I love you,” she repeated softly. “I … I’m sorry. I can’t go full romcom and say you had me at hello or anything, because even though I thought you were hot as fuck when I first met you, I _wasn’t_ in love with you then. That happened after. But … not too much long after.”

With reluctance, she pulled her hands from his, gathering every reserve of courage she could find. But she couldn’t look at his face anymore. Any hint of annoyance — or worse, pity — in his expression and she knew that she’d not be able go through with the rest of it.

“It’s true that I told Solo we were dating to get him off my back. But after awhile, I realized that wasn’t the only reason. I … I wanted it to be true. It wasn’t, but I wished it were.”

She risked a look at him. Finn hadn’t moved; his arms were dangling rather forgotten at his sides, and he looked very much like a person who’d been struck by lightning but had still managed to stay upright.

“But we’d made an agreement,” she said. “And I didn’t think … I felt it was best that …”

Rey stopped. Centered herself. _No. If you’re going to say it, say all of it._

“I didn’t want to feel that way. In the Gulch, needing or loving someone could get you hurt. Could get you left behind,” she said. “I didn’t want that. I’d managed to survive there because I figured out early on that _love_ could be dangerous. That’s why HookUUp appealed to me. All the best parts of a relationship without the risk. And I liked having that with you. It was enough — for a while. Then somewhere along the way … it stopped being enough.”

Finn took a step toward her, then stopped, an indecipherable look flashing across his face. Rey’s heart sank, and any hope that her confession would result in something positive died.

_Rose. He’s got Rose now._

“I’m not saying this because I want to upend your life.” She held her hands out in a protective gesture. “Or because I expect anything to change. You’re … you have … But if I’m all those things you say I am — strong, a survivor, a good, worthwhile person — then it’s not fair to lie to you anymore. I’m sorry, Finn. I’m sorry I used you against Solo. I’m sorry I never had the courage before now to tell you how I really felt. I’m sorry if telling you this now makes you uncomfortable. I don’t expect or want anything from you. I’m leaving — you’ll never have to see me again after I walk out of here. But … after all this lying, I wanted to finally tell you the truth.”

Finn shook his head very slowly, appearing much like a person who’d been out in the sun too long.

“Rey, I don’t get it. What about Paul?”

Rey started. That had been the last thing she’d expected Finn to say. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell Finn that she’d had a realization that she wasn’t being fair to “Paul” either and had broken up with him, but she resisted the urge. She couldn’t be a hypocrite and say that Finn was finally getting the truth from her and then continue with a lie.

“Paul …” She sighed. “There _is_ no Paul, Finn. There never was. I made him up. I —”

“— Yeah, I _know_ that,” he interrupted. “What I don’t understand is _why_? I mean, I thought I _knew_ why, but if you’re being serious about feeling this way about me, then I don’t –”

“— What do you _mean_ you knew that?” She gaped at him. “ _How_ did you know that? How could you know _that_?”

“Well, it was kind of a shock, you just rocking up with a wholeass _boyfriend_ out of the blue,” he said. “I’m not going to pretend I wasn’t immediately suspicious. Then I figured, why not? There were probably a ton of dudes — a ton of people, period — who’d line up to date you. But then you tipped your hand.”

“ _How_?”

“You said you saw _Ragnarok_ with him the last time I was out of town. That’s when I went to visit the Naboo Falls office,” he said. “It sounded weird to me at first, but I couldn’t figure out why it was nagging at me. I knew you’d seen the movie, because we’d talked about it. Then I hit on it when I was, uh, reminiscing about some of our old conversations. You said you and he went to the movie after seeing an exhibit at the Botanical Garden. That’s where you messed up.”

“Because I said I went on a date at the Botanical Garden?” Rey felt suddenly defensive of her fake relationship. “What’s so strange about that? Is it so hard to believe there would be a guy who _shares_ my interest in plants?”

“Rey, if you said you were interested in doing handstands over hot coals, some guy would be there with a Boston fern in one hand and burn cream in the other.” He grinned. “No, it was the _time_. I looked it up: That week, the Botanical Garden only had that exhibit on Saturday evening — at 6:50, to be exact. It’s 45 minutes long, so it’d be no issue for you to catch the 8 o’clock showing of _Ragnarok_ at the Multiplex downtown afterward.”

“Okay … and ...?”

“ _And_ , that same night we spent an hour sexting.” He lifted an eyebrow at her. “Remember? We were RPing being Steve Trevor and Wonder Woman and you were tying me up with the Lasso of Truth.”

Rey _did_ remember, and it caused a flood of good — if inconvenient — memories.

“Well … I mean, I _had_ said I hadn’t made up my mind about ‘Paul,’ then,” she said. “I wouldn’t have slept with anyone before ending things with you. Why would it be so weird if I’d gone home to … um … relax?”

“It wouldn’t be — if you had been home. But you weren’t. I still have that text thread. I used it a lot to, um, _relax_ — after the fact.” Finn’s eyes glazed over a brief moment before he snapped out of it. “And we started at 7:32 p.m. local time and went through to nearly 8:45 … meaning you’d have to have started _at_ the Gardens, then manage to not draw attention to the fact that you were texting with one hand, get to the Multiplex, and _then_ sometime between popcorn and the previews, head to the bathroom to finish up. All without missing a beat.”

Rey wanted to sink through the floor. _Fuck. I knew I should have picked another movie._

“Nice going, Counselor.” Despite her embarrassment, she glared at him. “Is this how you trip people up in court?”

“Nah. I’m a transactional attorney. We don’t really get to do the Matlock stuff.” He grinned at her. “So, when I figured out you’d lied about going to the movies with this guy, I realized you were probably making the whole thing up. Oh, and I checked out the online employee directory for Snoke Inc. There are three Pauls: One works in the office in Mustafar Circle, one works in operations, which is not what you said he did, and the other one is about 80. I know you like your guys a little older, but I figured that was pushing it.”

“Now _I_ don’t get it,” she said, her face flushed with humiliation. “If you _knew_ I was lying, why didn’t you call me out on it?”

“Because I thought you’d caught on, and you invented this guy as a way to let me down easy.”

“Finn, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let you down easy for _what_?” She stared at him. “Caught on to _what_?”

He looked at her quietly for many long moments — long enough that Rey felt herself blushing under his earnest gaze.

“You really didn’t know?”

Rey resisted the urge to scream. “Finn, what the fuck are you _talking_ about? Know _what_?”

“That I’d fallen in love with you.”

“ _Finally_!” She said, not troubling to hide exasperation. “You could have just said _—_ ”

And then the impact of his words hit her full force and she felt the breath leave her body.

She tried to speak but nothing came out, and she collapsed onto the bed as if the tendons in her legs had been cut.

“Rey?”

She felt, rather than saw, him take a few steps toward her.

“Don’t.” She held up a hand as if to ward him off, not even relieved that her voice had returned. “Just … _don’t,_ okay? You don’t have to … to say that because of what _I_ said. I told you, I’m not expecting —”

“Rey.”

Something in his voice, in the way he said her name, made her look up. He was staring at her. There was nothing in particular she could read in his face. It was all in his eyes – those beautiful, luminous, dark eyes.

Everything was there. _Everything_.

“Oh …” she breathed, feeling the room spin around her. “Oh my god …”

Her brain felt as if it were blotted out by cotton wool as the pieces fell into place with an almost insolent click. Finn’s kindness to her, his continual concern, the gifts, the gentleness, the cuddling, the grapefruit Lacroixs …

The man of her dreams had been in love with her all this time and she’d been so frightened of her feelings that she hadn’t recognized his own.

Rey was only vaguely aware when Finn sat next to her on his own bed.

“You okay?”

“I …” Rey cleared her throat and tried again. “Seriously, I … don’t know.”

“All right. I withdraw the question.”

There was silence for a time. Rey shifted on the bed and cleared her throat.

“When did you …” Rey snuck a sideways glance at him. “How long have you felt like this?”

“Almost from the beginning.”

Rey’s head whipped around and she just missed hitting Finn with her wet hair.

“What?”

“Too romcom for you?” Finn smiled somewhat sheepishly. “Sorry. I can be corny sometimes, like you said when we were at your place the night before I left for Canto Bight.”

“But it works for you,” she intoned softly, flushing when his smile broadened. “Really? That long?”

“Really. I mean, I wasn’t sure what to expect out of this whole thing,” he said. “Since we Skyped before meeting, I knew you weren’t catfishing me, but I couldn’t really believe that a super-hot girl was going to actually have sex with me just because we swiped up on each other’s profiles on an app.”

Rey frowned, remembering something Solo had said.

“Finn, you’re hot as hell yourself. You didn’t need the app. You could’ve just walked into a club or a bar and picked someone up.”

“I guess. But that’s never really been me. Plus, I could say the same about you, though I know that can be really dangerous for women — not that apps _can’t_ be. Anyway, I told myself not to bother getting my hopes — or anything else — up.” He reflected a moment. “But when you walked through those doors at the café, I thought I hit the fucking jackpot. I was _sure_ something would be off — you’d be a smoker or a heavy drinker or love Adam Sandler movies. And then when I realized none of that was true, I thought, ‘Okay, so we won’t click in bed. _That’s_ where the snag’ll be …”

A goofy grin stretched his face. “But _no_. That was _definitely_ not a problem. So I had to consider that I’d probably met my perfect woman, but all she wanted was a casual arrangement.”

His eyes turned sad. “And I figured that’s what Paul was about.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’d broken the rules of our arrangement. You know, no heavy feelings, no deep ties, no wanting something serious. Just two friends having fun. I’d always assumed that we’d drift apart eventually, or I’d get tired of you treating me like I didn’t matter to you.”

Rey felt her gut twist, but Finn shook his head and smiled.

“But you never _did_ treat me that way. I always felt like there was something _more_. But you’d always hammer home that we weren’t a couple. It was confusing, but not confusing enough for me to want to stop — or for my feelings to change. I just assumed things would come to a head and we’d have to talk about things. To be honest, when you first mentioned Solo, until you told me what was really going on, I thought that was sort of a warning shot — you telling me to back off because things were feeling weird to you. When Paul popped up, I thought you’d found me out. But you were feeling generous: You didn’t want to rip into me for going against what we’d agreed to, and you wanted to let me leave with _some_ sort of dignity so you made up meeting some guy you wanted to date.”

Rey could have laughed if she thought it could keep her from the overwhelming despair she felt.

“That wasn’t it at all!”

“Yeah, I get that now.” He stared at her. “So why _did_ you tell me that and then leave here like you’d stolen something? If you’re in love with me, and I’m in love with you, what was the point of Paul?”

“Rose!” Rey wanted to tear her hair out. “He was because of Rose!”

Finn looked puzzled. “Rose?”

“Rose Tico!”

“Yeah, I know what Rose you’re talking about. I just don’t understand what a fake boyfriend has to do with her.”

“I thought you were dating _her_!”

Finn let out a shocked laugh, but it sounded slightly like he’d been kicked in the stomach. “ _What_?”

“Well, not dating her exactly, but that you _wanted_ to date her,” she said, feeling incredibly silly. “I mean, I knew you wouldn’t fuck me and date her, but I thought … I don’t know … I thought you were too shy or too weirded out that you’d been in a hookup situation for so long to ask her out, so I invented Paul so you’d go for it.”

“Why the hell would you think I’d want to _date_ Rose?”

Rey’s eyes narrowed and she forced the word out through clenched teeth.

“Solo.”

“ _Solo_? I’m almost afraid to ask how _he_ figures into this.”

Slowly, Rey told him the whole story … Solo’s insinuations, the needling, the pointed remarks, the insincere smiles, the barbed compliments …

As she spoke, Finn looked alternately bewildered, amazed, angry, and intrigued.

“Okay, so he was trying to make you think I was messing around on you with another girl …”

“Well, or that you were thinking about it,” she said, grimacing at the memory. “He was always talking about how close you two were, how you ate lunch every day together –”

“Not _every_ day. And it’s never just us,” said Finn. “It’s a group of us from B & F in the canteen together. He left _that_ part out, huh?”

Rey suddenly wished she’d gotten a few more kicks in. “Apparently so.”

“And so he was telling you all of this, figuring that as my _girlfriend_ , you’d either get suspicious, and we’d break up,” said Finn, “or that you’d get jealous and we’d fight, and we’d break up, or that you’d decide you wanted to get back at me and fuck him, and break up with me.”

“Ew. I didn’t even consider that last scenario.” She fought off a shudder. “But yeah, pretty much. He obviously didn’t know that since you _weren’t_ my boyfriend, you didn’t have any obligation to me and you could flirt with whoever you want. And I thought that, too, because of the arrangement. I didn’t have any reason or right to be jealous … but I was.”

“Why didn’t you just _ask_ me what the deal was with me and Rose?” Finn gave her an inquisitive glance. “Even if you didn’t want to tell me how you felt about me, you could’ve just asked me if I was into her. We’ve always been honest with each other. I would’ve told you if I were.”

“Yeah, I know you would’ve been honest,” said Rey softly. “But … I realized I didn’t really _want_ to know. I just figured I could ignore it — you talking about her, telling me you talked with her the entire plane ride to Cantonica — but then …”

Finn waited a moment before prompting with a gentle, “But then …?”

“But _then_ … I saw you two on Instagram. Your firm’s Instagram story,” she added, noting the slight pout that made him look perplexed rather than peevish. “When you won the minigolf thing. The way you two laughed together and the way you spun her around. It was like one of those cheesy 80s movies … and then it was like someone turned the hose on you guys, and you barely looked at each other after, like you were saying, ‘We can’t do this. We’re into each other, but … we can’t do it.’ I didn’t want that to be because of me. I didn’t want to be in the way. So … Paul.”

Finn groaned, massaging his temples. “Fuck. I thought someone told the social media team not to put that up. But, we weren’t reenacting some John Hughes thing — and he was a dickhead anyway. The reason we stopped so quickly is because we were playing for a charity that helps kids with cancer. Bracken Noles, a guy on the Litigation team that we ended up beating, had a little brother who died of leukemia a couple of years ago. It was a close game, and when we won we sort of just got swept up in the moment, then realized we shouldn’t be celebrating like we’d just won the Super Bowl at an event for sick kids. We apologized to Bracken, but he was cool about it. We’re going to donate the money in brother’s name.”

“Wow.” Rey toyed with the hem of the hoodie. “It’s so weird how Solo twisted everything around and got pretty much _nothing_ right, but still managed to make me feel like shit. He has a knack for that.”

“I’m sorry. I understand why you felt you couldn’t just talk to me about it, but I wish you had.” Finn put his head to one side, thinking. “And now I think I know where Solo was getting his information. Rodinon.”

“Who?”

“Owen Rodinon.” Finn’s jaw tightened. “He’s an associate in the Family Wealth Management group. Big dude with a brushcut. A little older than me. He went to the same prep school as Solo, I remember him mentioning it when Maz talked about the Organa-Solo Service Award in Cantonica. He was all over Rose at the holiday party last year and she ignored him. If Solo was asking Rodinon specifically about me, he might’ve mentioned the people I’m close to at the firm. He’s probably still salty that Rose blew him off, so he might have embellished our actual relationship. We never invite _him_ to hang out with us.”

“So, you’ve _never_ been interested in Rose?”

“Not like that, no. Though, there was sort of an awkward moment a year or so ago.”

“Awkward?” Rey tensed. “Care to elaborate?”

Finn half-smiled. “Rose’s sister Paige is good friends with Poe. I’ve mentioned him, right?”

"Yeah ..."

“Rose was kind of standoffish with me at first because she thought I expected special treatment at the firm because Maz was my foster mother, and I thought she was kind of stuck up. But then, totally by accident, we found out that her sister Paige had graduated from the Air Force Academy a year behind Poe, and they were good friends. We all started hanging out, and that gave me and Rose a chance to get to know each other better and realize our first impressions were wrong. Anyway, there _was_ this one party where Rose had a little too much to drink and, ah, she kissed me …”

“She _kissed_ you?” Rey eyed him warily. “Really.”

“It was … unexpected. I was just minding my business, trying to figure out why Poe had 14 copies of the Thong Song burned on a CD. I mean it’s kind of a bop, but …” He shook his head. “Anyway, she planted one on me, and I just sort of stood there, trying to figure out _what the fuck_? When I didn’t react, she ran out, puked in the backyard, and passed out.”

Her annoyance instantly disappeared. “Yikes.”

“Yeah. I felt kinda bad.”  He looked thoughtful. “When she came to — and had, like, 10 cups of coffee — we talked. I mean, I liked her. She’s pretty, smart, a lot of fun. On paper, it would be a great match, but I just didn’t feel _it_ , you know? I didn’t want to lead her on and I still wanted to be friends. She agreed and kind of apologized for ambushing me like that. Liquid courage, I guess. But that’s it. We’ve never been anything more than friends. In fact … I talked to her about you. A lot.”

The tips of Rey’s ears grew warm. “You did?”

“Yeah. I mean, not at first,” he said. “But when I started … feeling what I was feeling, I wasn’t sure what to do. We were waiting for a client one day and Rose said she could tell something was up, and she sort of coaxed it out of me.”

Finn took Rey’s hand and gazed at her. “Rose told me I needed to tell you the truth. It was your right to want what you wanted out of this arrangement, and it wasn’t fair to mislead you about how I felt.”

“She _said_ that? But she’s _your_ friend.”

“Well, yeah, I mean she _also_ said that I had the right to my feelings and that maybe I was wrong about only wanting a casual arrangement. Maybe I actually wanted a girlfriend all along,” said Finn. “And that was okay. But it _wasn’t_ okay to pretend I didn’t feel something when I did, and I knew she was right. At Canto Bight, I made up my mind that I was gonna tell you everything when I got back — and whatever happened, happened. I would’ve accepted whatever you decided, even if that meant you never wanted to see me again. But then …”

Rey sighed. “… Paul.”

“Paul.”

She laughed softly beneath her breath, squeezing his hand gently.

“We’re a couple of idiots, Finn.”

“Pretty much.” Finn was quiet for a moment. “So … what now?”

Rey looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“Everything’s out in the open. No more secrets. Where do we go from here? What do you want? Do you want _us_? For there to be an _us_?”

“Finn, there’s been an _us_ for a long time. I think what I want is for us to finally acknowledge that there _is_ an _us_.”

“Noted.” He grinned. “Okay. I decree that as of this moment, there is an _us_.”

“It is law.” She smiled back and he grimaced in mock exasperation.

“I thought you hated memes.”

“Only sometimes. That one seemed appropriate, because, you know, it makes it official.”

“Not quite. When Obama did that little slap, _that_ made it official. And that’s what made it funny.”

“Yeah.”

He brought his hand to her face, the pad of his thumb caressing her lips. “I have a better idea.”

Rey closed her eyes for a split second to enjoy the feel of his hands on her face. She kissed his thumb when it swiped over her lips again.

When she opened her eyes, she saw Finn had moved closer to her. There were sparks in his eyes again, and they made her shiver – in a good way – as he moved his face toward hers. He kissed her without rushing — a full, wet, delectable kiss. Her body reacted when his tongue touched her lips, every part of her tingling, every nerve ending feeling as if they had caught fire.

When he pulled away, Rey couldn’t get her breath for a moment. They’d had longer kisses. Kisses with more tongue and spit. But she knew that as long as she lived, she’d never forget the complete perfection of their first “official” kiss.

Her eyes shone with happiness as she murmured, “I love you, Finn Leonis.”

“I love you, Rey Walker.” He grazed her cheek with his fingertips. “How could I not? You punched the hell out of some dude to defend my honor, after all.”

Rey half-smiled. “He had it coming. That was just the final straw.”

“Good point. So, moving on – we have a whole afternoon to ourselves.” Finn said slowly, looking toward the door. “Any ideas about what we should do for the rest of the day?”

She thought it over for several moments.

“I want … food. Sleep. For you to make me scream. To watch the new _Masterchef_ …”

Finn grinned and stood up. “Got it. Let me get my phone. How about that Thai place –”

Rey grabbed Finn by both hands and pulled him back down to the bed, using his momentary surprise and imbalance to reverse their positions so that she was straddling him.

“I didn’t necessarily mean in _that_ order …”

 

* * *

 

Rey had been just staring at her reflection for a solid five minutes. A few women had come and go, shooting her odd looks as they washed up and did the normal thing that people did when entering a public restroom — namely leaving it as quickly as possible.

But as she stared at her impassive face in the mirror, noticed her careful makeup, her hair back in a sober twist at the base of her neck, attired in a navy suit, she barely recognized herself. She looked like a Congressional intern or maybe the executive assistant of a publishing house magnate. Not like _her_.

And yet … she liked it. She liked it very much. The quiet, dignified young woman that looked back at her made Rey unaccountably pleased. She was happy she’d allowed Pam to talk her into getting the suit in navy. Grey would have washed her out.

Rey took a deep breath, instantly wished she hadn’t, and then washed her hands and left the ladies’ room, her hands still slightly damp.

The corridor of the stately office building that housed the offices of Kanata, Chewbacca and Antilles LLP was quiet now, though there were a knot of people down the far end of the hall talking easily together. Rey could pick out Finn immediately, and she smiled. Next to him stood Rose Tico, gesticulating energetically. Poe Dameron was there, too, in a collared shirt and suit but no tie, laughing at Rose’s antics.

Rey smiled wider and quickened her steps.

In the eight months since she’d left Snoke Incorporated, to say life had drastically changed was an understatement. The day she and Finn had declared their love for each other was the last time she’d seen her tiny apartment. She’d returned in Finn’s company later that evening to collect some clothes and plants and to pay off her landlord and tell him what he could do with his little _cozy studio_.

The transition to living with Finn had not been as onerous as Rey had feared. She’d wondered if they’d get in each other’s way or get on each other’s nerves, but it was almost eerie how suited for cohabitation they were. Her plants thrived and Finn, always reluctant to cook just for himself and reliant on takeout as a result, could indulge his _Masterchef_ fantasies and make delicious meals for them on the nights he wasn’t exhausted from work. On the other nights, Rey picked up the slack, but it was Finn who had the touch. He loved the little herb garden she’d brought along from her old place, just as she’d hoped he would. And she continued to adore the shower.

Also yes, they went to the farmer’s market on Sundays, but Rey decided they wouldn’t be _that_ obnoxious, lovey couple … though they did hold hands.

But one of the biggest changes was the introduction of Rey by Finn to his intimate circle of friends, beginning — appropriately, Rey thought — with Rose Tico.

Rey had taken to Rose quickly, loving her exuberance and her wit. She possessed a keen knowledge about cars and mechanical items, and Rey knew that Rose had accepted her as a close friend when she was invited to see her “workshop” — a small alcove off the home she shared with her older sister, Paige, an impossibly beautiful woman who was tough as nails and had dreams of opening her own flight school. She’d promised Rey lessons as soon as she got her school … off the ground.

The pun really couldn’t have been helped. Rey forgave her after laughing her ass off.

Poe Dameron was one of Finn’s closest friends, and Rey felt that she could listen to his stories about the Air Force Academy and his early missions for hours. His partner, Iolo Arana, who had been his roommate at the Academy, was as quiet as Poe was voluable, and cuttingly funny when he accented one of Poe’s tales with “what actually happened.”

And there were Kay, and Devon, and Kare, and Snap, and Rich, and Maz …  

Ah, Maz. Rey had been nervous as hell when Finn had taken her to meet Maz Kanata. Pulling up to her wedding-cake of a house on the outskirts of town, Finn had cautioned Rey not to react to what she might see inside his foster mother’s home, which had frightened her a little. She wanted to make a good impression, and it was nerve-wracking enough knowing that she was meeting the only parental figure Finn had ever really known.  But it had been fine. Maz’s house was creatively bizarre, with bronze jugs and modern art, and twisted rock sculptures, and furniture with what looked like spikes. Rey had rather liked it.

But there had been an awkward moment right at the start. Rey hadn’t known what to think when, after Finn made the introductions, Maz’s nut-brown, wizened face peered up at her through impossibly thick glasses for several silent seconds, before whipping her head toward Finn and asking, “So, this is the girl?”

Finn had laughed and wrapped his arms around Rey, saying, “Yep. This is _the_ girl,” in a way that made Rey’s insides vibrate pleasantly.

The dinner was a success, with Rey gorging on exotic dishes and trying to not laugh at Maz’s hilarious stories about Finn’s youth, snickering when she meaningfully looked at Finn and said, “Don’t forget: I have pictures.”

Later, Finn said Maz had adored her, which seemed to be confirmed by the delivery of a beautiful Gar fern a few days later. Rey had not seen many plants at Maz’s place, so she was doubly touched that she’d researched plants enough to pick one not toxic to animals since she and Finn were seriously considering adopting a kitten.

In the space of eight months, Rey had three things that she’d never had in all her years in Jakku Gulch: Friends, family, love. Meeting Finn had opened not just her heart, but her world. Sometimes it was hard to believe it was all real.

As she reached the throng at the end of the hall and caught Finn’s concerned glance, she was brought back to reality. Yes, her life was, despite every expectation, going incredibly well.

But there was one piece of business left …

Finn detached himself from the group to meet her halfway.

“You okay? Rose was talking about sending a search party for you in the bathroom.”

“I’m fine,” said Rey brightly enough to let Finn know that she might not be _fine_ , exactly, but that she would be okay.

“I just … needed a minute, you know? Get my head in the game.”

“I get you,” he said, wrapping his arms around his shoulders. “This is the final hurdle. Took them long enough to cave. That last threat really rattled them.”

He stared at her. “You’re _sure_ you’re okay with all of this?”

“Finn, of course I am.” She was surprised. “Like you said, this is the final hurdle. We’re almost clear.”

He smiled, as Rey hoped he would, at the use of the word “we.”

“I know … but this deal means that this goes away. Everything you put up with. Everything he did.” His eyes darkened. “Forever. And that piece of shit stays on the outside of a jail cell.”

“Which would have happened whether I did this or not,” said Rey, placing a hand on his cheek. “Believe me, when Pam first explained it, I did wonder if … if I was selling out. But then when you, and she and Maz told me that it was probable that he wouldn’t see any jail time, even if he were convicted, then I knew what I had to do.”

Her eyes turned steely. “I can still make him — all of them — _hurt_.”

Finn nodded, and his expression told Rey that he understood.

“Pam said she’ll be right back. They want to get started around 10.” He glanced at his watch. “A few more minutes.”

“Great. Let’s mingle then.”

Rey had seen some of their friends looking over at them, trying not to let worry show in their expressions, and she wanted to dispel the tension. She wound her arm around Finn and they walked over to the crowd in time to hear Iolo “correcting” Poe on how he’d _really_ gotten untangled from an Air Force parasail line.

Rey felt Finn’s comforting warmth next to her and let herself be drawn into the conversation. At the back of her mind, however, she thought about the missing member of their group: Pamich Goode, introduced to her by Finn and Rose a few months after she’d moved in with Finn.

Pam was tall, dark-skinned, gorgeous, smart as a whip, and the head of the firm’s Workplace Investigations Team. She helped people who were victims of any sort of harassment in the workplace get their due.

Pam had done some digging and discovered Solo’s shenanigans had stretched back even farther than Rey knew. He’d pulled the same locked-door stunt as he had with Rey in several unwilling participants, with varying degrees of success. Regardless of outcome, each of his targets were unceremoniously shown the door afterwards, all covered up by Snoke. Aside from Rey and two other women, all of Solo’s victims had signed the same termination of employment agreement that Pince Nez had shoved at her the day Rey had broken Ben Solo’s face. An ironclad NDA clause in the dismissal papers kept those women from holding Snoke Inc. responsible, and the company threatened heavy reprisals if any of the women talked.

When Pam told her that not signing that contract had been the best move she’d ever made, Rey told her the advice had come from the most brilliant lawyer she’d ever met — and that he gave the advice for free. Pam had laughed, saying she had to talk to Finn about doing pro bono work off the books.

Pam had gotten in touch with the two other women who’d not signed, persuading them to let her open an action on their behalf. She’d hoped to get Solo on false imprisonment, which was a felony in that state, and make a case that it was a pattern of behavior that had been exposed by Rey’s fighting back, but there’d been a snag. Solo insisted the locking mechanism had engaged without his knowledge, and the last service Orta Tarkin did for Snoke Inc. before turning in her resignation was to sign a sworn statement that Solo and Rey had been having a perfectly cordial conversation when she’d seen the two of them in her office, and that the office door far from being locked, was open. That had been enough to give the DA’s office cold feet on bringing charges against Ben Solo, which angered Rey a great deal until Pam said that there was still a way to get Solo — and that was through Snoke himself. And the way to do _that_ was to hit him where he lived. His pocketbook.

It had taken a few days for Pam to persuade Rey and the other two women to bring a civil suit against Snoke Incorporated for fostering a hostile work environment. Pam was as brutally honest as she was smart. She was blunt when she told the women that the fact that they were all young, pretty, and white would play well in the press, and if they went to the media, Snoke would have a PR problem of epic proportions if he put up much of a fight. Not to mention that the many friends of the late Senator Leia Organa-Solo would not want her name tainted by the machinations of her son. Many of those friends were politicians and businesspeople with influence who undoubtedly would press Snoke to settle.

Pam had been absolutely right. It took weeks, but Snoke had finally had enough and was prepared to settle for the amount Pam had pushed for — an amount of money that had made Rey’s eyes bulge when she’d first seen the bare figures on the page.

Now, this was it. Rey was attired professionally, surrounded by friends and with the love of her life at her side, to sign the papers that would wipe the insufferable grin off Ben Solo’s face forever and make her and her two co-complainants wealthy women.

And despite Pam telling Snoke’s people that she’d keep things out of the media, one of Paige’s friends was a journalist for a popular blog and had written a not-so-blind item about a large industrialist in the Quarren Quarter paying out the ass to settle harassment claims brought against his young protégé — a man with a famous name.

Snoke had been apoplectic and had wanted to scuttle the whole deal. But with a straight face, Pam had denied knowing anything about the report, sweetly suggesting that maybe Snoke was the one with the leaky boat – pointing out that Orta Tarkin appeared _very_ displeased leaving his employ.

A side door opened and Pamich walked out, looking like a goddess in the same sort of grey suit that would have made Rey look like a shadow. With her were the other two women suing Snoke Incorporated — Lynda Frum and Deirdre Baker — flanked by a phalanx of tall, quiet, subtly muscled women. Ben Solo had attended all of the talks, glaring in quiet malevolence, which Rey felt was just to intimidate his accusers. Pam had insisted on the bodyguards as precaution — just in case Solo wanted to try something, though Snoke seemed to have effectively leashed him.

The women Pam had hired were professional, efficient — and armed.

So was Finn.

He used to shoot competitively in college, and of course, there had been his training in the Narrows, but while he was licensed to carry, he’d mostly shunned firearms after law school. But each day they’d come to the office, Finn had a pistol tucked up against his ribcage. It was not the one he’d brought with him from the Narrows – Maz had gotten rid of that some time ago. However, she’d presented him with a beautiful pearl-handled pistol, which ironically had belonged to Han Solo, to Finn upon his graduation from law school. He kept it out of the townhouse, but had unearthed it from its secure location once it became clear that Solo was not going to stop attending the negotiations.

The bodyguards had just gotten into position when the same side door opened and Solo, looking funereal in a black suit, came out, followed by Snoke — a taller man than he looked in his pictures, bald with a face that looked as if it had been carved out of wrinkles, his eyes cruel and small. Pince Nez — well, she supposed she’d have to call him Opan now since he’d traded the pince nez for a pair of wirerims that didn’t suit him — trailed in Snoke’s wake like a malignant slug, leafing through the papers in a folder and looking as if he had heartburn.

The hallway quieted. A door opened and Snoke walked in, shoving Solo aside with a sharp elbow with no small amount of impatience. It was not known why Snoke had not fired Solo or at least disavowed his actions. Pam had theorized that it would be more trouble than it was worth, and that maybe Solo knew where some of the bodies were buried as regarded Snoke Incorporated’s rumored illegal business practices. But it was clear that he had soured on his former protégé.

Solo rubbed his side where he’d been elbowed and grit his teeth. He turned his head slowly, running a contemptuous eye over the assembled crowd. His eyes lingered on her only briefly. Rey took in the deep scars crisscrossing his face and had to hold back a smile of pride. She almost thought she saw Solo flinch as he looked quickly away and followed the Chairman into the room ahead of Opan and a shorter man that was a clerk of some sort.

It was not lost on Rey that when Solo had started to look in her direction, Finn had moved forward, interposing himself between the two of them.

A collective sigh of relief sounded in the hall when the men were gone. Pam spoke quietly to the two women, who had been stone-faced at Solo’s appearance — and who had been ignored by him — before walking over to where Rey still had her arm around Finn.

“This is it.” Pam put a hand on Rey’s shoulder. “You ready?”

Rey nodded. “Ready.”

Pam nodded back and walked over to the open door.

With regret, Rey slid out of Finn’s half-embrace amid the murmurs of good luck and smiles from all their friends.

“We’ll be right here,” Finn said, not quite letting go of her hand. “ _I’ll_ be right here. We might grab coffee in the canteen, but I promise I _will_ be here when you get out.”

Rey squeezed his hand, acknowledging the meaning in those words. No matter what, Finn would be there for her. He would always come back for her.

As she walked to join Pamich, Lynda and Deirdre, Rey thought about the conversation she and Finn had had over the past week about what to do with the money, financial planners, tax considerations and the like. Rey had been slightly nervous to tell him that one of the things she planned to do immediately — other than get a new car and enroll in night classes to get her equivalency certificate — was to take a horticulture course at Harlan Gardens.

She’d met the docent Finn had talked to months earlier and discovered she liked the girl. She knew she’d been given misinformation about the midnight blooming bush but had been forced to do so by her imbecile boss, who, thankfully, had since been fired. The course ran for five months, with the final two months in a small hamlet in Ahch-To Springs. She’d never been, and word was Ahch-To Springs was rather … rustic, but the course was one that she just knew she had to take. She’d Skyped with the keeper of the conservatory and the teacher of the course, a grizzled man named Luke Skywalker who seemed oddly familiar to Rey.

Skywalker had been gruff and somewhat unfriendly, but Rey was sure he’d warm to her. Maybe.

To her great relief, Finn had been understanding and supportive of her plans, slyly remarking that they certainly could Skype during the time Rey was gone. He’d visit of course, but he feared she’d fall in love with the rustic charm of Ahch-To Springs and maybe decide to stay — and he wasn’t sure he was cut out for “roughing it.”

Rey had laughed, burrowed into his arms and told him that Ahch-To Springs could be made of gold, and she would still be back in five months. Aside from loving him to distraction and wanting to be with him always, there was another very good reason why she’d be back in that time.

She’d pretended not to notice his mystified expression, kissed him on the forehead, and said they’d talk about it after the settlement was signed.

Rey stopped briefly at the door to smooth her suit jacket, her hand lingering for a moment on her belly. She grinned and shook her head slightly. Now _that_ was going to be quite the conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd like to thank everyone who read, commented, and/or supported this story. I understand what TLJ did to the Finnrey fandom, and I'm so happy to be part of such a resilient part of fandom. I love this pairing and always will. For those of you who are Finnrey writers yourselves, please keep on writing! Your fics help sustain us all. 
> 
> I will be back! Thank you all again (and please tell me someone noticed the link between all the chapter titles ... lol!)


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